I found one very easy and useful guide to publish a blog with blogger.
Monday, October 29, 2012
7 Deadly Sins of SEO Copywriting
Strategies for writing content that is SEO friendly has changed over the years, so are your techniques still correct? If you’re writing content using out-dated or incorrect strategies, you may be committing sins without even realizing it.
Heather Lloyd-Martin from SEO Copywriting has outlined 7 sins of SEO copywriting that everyone should avoid, which I think are worth sharing with you.
Sin 1: Thou shalt not write to a certain word count because “it’s how you have to do it for Google.”
Here’s a news flash: Google really doesn’t care about your word count. If you find yourself trying to meet some mythical word count, relax. How long should your content be? As long as it needs to be to fully explain the topic and encourage the desired conversion.
Sin 2: Thou shalt not focus on a keyword density percentage.
I still see some folks convinced that shoving key phrases into the copy will help. It won’t. Trust me. Get over it.
Sin 3: Thou shalt not upload crap writing just because you can.
Bad content reflects poorly on your brand. Yes, you want to constantly upload new content. But that content needs to be good.
Sin 4: Thou shalt not write sales content that focuses on features rather than benefits.
If you focus your content solely on features (for instance, product dimensions) and ignore the benefits (how your product helps your customers) you can say goodbye to sales. People buy on emotion, so your copy needs to paint a picture – not get bogged down in benefit-free details. Good sales copy is good from an SEO perspective, too. The more reader-centered your content, the more folks who will share it, like it and link to it.
Sin 5: Thou shalt not provide a small amount of information on your site figuring that “customers will call if they want more information.”
Your website is your 24/7 sales team. If your prospects don’t find the information they need to see, they won’t necessarily call or email. In fact, they’ll probably just hit the back button and check out your competitors instead.
Sin 6: Thou shalt not ignore your page titles
Your Titles (the blue clickable link) need to be written like headlines for maximum impact. Yes, include keyphrases. But carefully consider what would “get the click” and differentiate you from the other results.
Sin 7: Thou shalt not write boring copy
Put some personality pizzaz into your writing. Think about what would make your reader lock on to your content and hungrily devour every word. The more you talk about what’s important to your readers the more you’ll connect with your audience – and the better results you’ll get from your content.
Read more: http://blog.ineedhits.com/search-news/7-deadly-sins-of-seo-copywriting-293812078.html
Heather Lloyd-Martin from SEO Copywriting has outlined 7 sins of SEO copywriting that everyone should avoid, which I think are worth sharing with you.
Sin 1: Thou shalt not write to a certain word count because “it’s how you have to do it for Google.”
Here’s a news flash: Google really doesn’t care about your word count. If you find yourself trying to meet some mythical word count, relax. How long should your content be? As long as it needs to be to fully explain the topic and encourage the desired conversion.
Sin 2: Thou shalt not focus on a keyword density percentage.
I still see some folks convinced that shoving key phrases into the copy will help. It won’t. Trust me. Get over it.
Sin 3: Thou shalt not upload crap writing just because you can.
Bad content reflects poorly on your brand. Yes, you want to constantly upload new content. But that content needs to be good.
Sin 4: Thou shalt not write sales content that focuses on features rather than benefits.
If you focus your content solely on features (for instance, product dimensions) and ignore the benefits (how your product helps your customers) you can say goodbye to sales. People buy on emotion, so your copy needs to paint a picture – not get bogged down in benefit-free details. Good sales copy is good from an SEO perspective, too. The more reader-centered your content, the more folks who will share it, like it and link to it.
Sin 5: Thou shalt not provide a small amount of information on your site figuring that “customers will call if they want more information.”
Your website is your 24/7 sales team. If your prospects don’t find the information they need to see, they won’t necessarily call or email. In fact, they’ll probably just hit the back button and check out your competitors instead.
Sin 6: Thou shalt not ignore your page titles
Your Titles (the blue clickable link) need to be written like headlines for maximum impact. Yes, include keyphrases. But carefully consider what would “get the click” and differentiate you from the other results.
Sin 7: Thou shalt not write boring copy
Put some personality pizzaz into your writing. Think about what would make your reader lock on to your content and hungrily devour every word. The more you talk about what’s important to your readers the more you’ll connect with your audience – and the better results you’ll get from your content.
Read more: http://blog.ineedhits.com/search-news/7-deadly-sins-of-seo-copywriting-293812078.html
Twitter and Traffic Generation
Twitter is one of the most important social media sites present today. So, we can use (we should use) twitter to get traffic from it. Most of us are not using Twitter to its fullest capabilities. What I see is this prevalent trend of promotional tweeting (tweets with links).
But Twitter is far more than that. Just because you tweeted it doesn’t make it so important that you will get more traffic. Moreover, only a small ratio of twitter users are the audience of your tweets, because Twitter is updated every second.
In this blog post, we will talk about target/audience specific tweeting techniques, rewording & retweeting techniques, messaging, give and take love techniques and lots more. Many of these techniques might be familiar to you.
Read more: http://www.famousbloggers.net/twitter-traffic.html
But Twitter is far more than that. Just because you tweeted it doesn’t make it so important that you will get more traffic. Moreover, only a small ratio of twitter users are the audience of your tweets, because Twitter is updated every second.
In this blog post, we will talk about target/audience specific tweeting techniques, rewording & retweeting techniques, messaging, give and take love techniques and lots more. Many of these techniques might be familiar to you.
Read more: http://www.famousbloggers.net/twitter-traffic.html
Monday, October 8, 2012
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
SEO is the practice of improving and promoting a web site in order to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines. There are many aspects to SEO, from the words on your page to the way other sites link to you on the web. Sometimes SEO is simply a matter of making sure your site is structured in a way that search engines understand.
Search Engine Optimization isn't just about "engines." It's about making your site better for people too. At SEOmoz we believe these principles go hand in hand.
This guide is designed to describe all areas of SEO - from discovery of the terms and phrases (keywords) that generate traffic, to making a site search engine friendly, to building the links and marketing the unique value of the site/organization's offerings. Don't worry, if you are confused about this stuff, you are not alone.
Search Engine Optimization isn't just about "engines." It's about making your site better for people too. At SEOmoz we believe these principles go hand in hand.
This guide is designed to describe all areas of SEO - from discovery of the terms and phrases (keywords) that generate traffic, to making a site search engine friendly, to building the links and marketing the unique value of the site/organization's offerings. Don't worry, if you are confused about this stuff, you are not alone.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Your 10-Step Guide to Blogging
Inc.com blogger Maisha Walker lays out a 10-step guide to starting, writing, marketing and monetizing your company blog.
For many, blogging conjures up fears of being chained to one's computer spending countless hours on content that no one will read. But it doesn't have to be that way. From an online journal at 1,000 words per post to a simple 140-character Twitter feed, blogging has taken center stage largely because of how useful it has proven itself to be in almost all areas of business. Blogging can also be profitable according to research by Technorati, an Internet search engine for searching blogs, which reports that for blogs with 100,000 or more unique monthly visitors revenue averages about $75,000 annually. As a companion to my popular series on Blogging, here is a step-by-step guide to getting your blog from zero to thousands of readers.
Note: This guide doesn't touch on micro-blogging, the type of short blog posts that can be found on Twitter or on other social networking status updates. For more information on how these blogs can be helpful, read 5 Ways to Actually Make Money on Twitter.
Step 1: Determine why you are blogging.
In my post "To Blog or Not to Blog", I outlined the four reasons why a website exists to aid a business: 1) to build a brand, 2) generate leads, 3) generate direct sales, or 4) generate advertising revenue. A blog can also support any one of these goals. Which goals are you trying to accomplish with your company website and which are you trying to accomplish with your blog?
Define what success looks like? If your goal is branding, what awareness studies will you do? If your goal is advertising revenue, how much do you hope to make? How many readers and page views do you need? For lead generation, how many phone calls or e-mails do you want to get from your blog? These goals can change, but it is important to put a stake in the ground and then measure against it. Also, take a look at How Twitter Helps a CEO Run His Company for a peek at how micro-blogging (Twitter) helped this CEO gain feedback about his company.
Step 2: Determine the "concept" of your blog.
What is the niche you will write about? Who will care? Once you know WHY you are blogging, you can think about WHAT to blog about. You may go back and forth between Step 1 and Step 2 for a few rounds before making your final decision. Some people start with an idea for a blog but when they put it to the test of actually generating revenue the idea changes. Step 1 and Step 2 must work in tandem and you have to know that there is an audience for what you have to say.
Your blog concept can be very narrow, attracting a small but passionate niche of readers and few, if any, competitors, or it can focus broadly on a topic that is widely popular but has a lot of competition. Much of your decision may rely on the resources available to you and ultimately your goals. Do you have a large marketing budget, staff and resources for your blog? Do you already have access to a large audience of readers (thousands to tens of thousands of readers)? Do you have a long period of time (2-3 years) over which you can consistently devote 5-10 hours per week of writing and marketing efforts to slowly build your blog audience and subscriber base? If you answered no to all of these questions you may want to consider focusing narrowly since creating a very unique voice or speaking on a unique topic is a much easier and faster way to break through the noise than writing about the same thing that everyone else writes about.
Step 3: Will your blog be separate or integrated into your site?
This is actually two questions:
1. Will your blog be under the same domain name as your site? The benefit of this is that you will get more (search engine optimization) SEO value out of the content of your blog. Some advise putting your blog under a different domain and linking generously between the two sites in order to gain "link popularity." But link popularity is not necessarily the most important element of SEO (nor will it help you much to have many links between two sites neither of which is itself highly ranked). Having a larger amount of keyword-rich content on your site is usually far more important. Having your blog hosted under the same domain name as your site will add all of your blog content to your site content when search engines determine where to place your site in the rankings. For more about Search Engine Optimization read this detailed guide or my blog post on the topic.
2. Will your blog exist within the same software as your site? If your website is built within a Content Management System (which is usually a very good idea because updating is made easier) it is typically most useful to have your blog constructed within that same CMS. These programs, including Drupal, Joomla and WordPress, will typically allow users to build both a website and a blog. The benefit here is that you only have ONE login to access and update all of the content of your site. Plus, there's only ONE system to learn. See my post titled "Build Your Blog" for a lot more detail on different options for building your blog, including free vs. paid, self-hosted vs. blogging-company hosted, WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com, etc.
Step 4: Decide what you will write about.
There are several decisions you'll need to make somewhat in tandem:
1) Frequency – Look at your resources and determine how often you can comfortably write content. Do you plan to pay someone to write content or write it yourself? While blogging frequency varies widely, the most typical frequency is daily, weekly or monthly. The more often you post, the more traffic you'll get.
2) Content – Now comes the part where you actually have to write something. It will be harder than you think. My strong recommendation is to compose your first five posts ahead of time and post them according to the schedule you devise. From there, you can determine if your frequency is realistic. Don't forget the power of headlines - a great headline will do a lot to attract readers. A great resource to help you with headline writing, copywriting or even blasting writer's block is CopyBlogger.
NOTE: It never hurts to take a cue from the experts. We've rounded up a list of 19 bloggers who not only provide great tips for your business but are also provide good examples of how to do it right.
3) Content Organization – Some content can be organized in topic categories while it may make sense for other blogs to be listed by date. If your style is more of a personal journal like the author of Dooce.com, categories won't make as much sense. Dooce blogger Heather Armstrong writes about whatever is on her mind at the moment so chronology works best.
4. Call to Action – How will you engage your readers to reach your ROI? Here are some phrases to include in your blog:
• Join my email list
• Download my ebook
• Buy my product
• Sign up for my service
• Call or email me for a consultation
• Buy advertising on this blog
• Connect with me on various social sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace etc.)
• Visit my store or office
• Come meet me at this live event
Integrate the calls to action that make sense for your needs into both the content and design of your blog. Your calls to action should impact your success goals from Step 1. If success for your blog is just having 10,000 readers per month, then your calls to action will focus heavily on marketing to new audiences and keeping existing readers happy. You can accomplish that by making content easy to find, highly engaging and being available to your audience.
Step 5: Determing your process.
Will your blog be managed by a single person (i.e. you are a solo entrepreneur) or will each blog post be reviewed by senior management? Who will be responsible for updating blog posts? These questions will affect frequency. This article on Blogging for Business highlights the things to beware of in establishing your blogging process, matching it to your goals and maintaining transparency and authenticity.
Step 6: Design your blog.
Now that you have an idea of what your calls to action will be, you have some actual content that can be used and you know the purpose of your blog you can determine design. If you are working with a budget of less than $5,000, I would strongly recommend working with a pre-designed template. You can either modify the template as needed or use the template as is. A custom template can be expensive when done well or not very good if done cheaply. You will often be far better off getting all the built-in testing, browser compatibility, features and functionality of a well made pre-designed template.
Step 7: Building your blog.
What software will you use and where will you host your blog? You have two options: 1) Host your blog with a third-party blog service provider like WordPress.com or Blogger.com; or 2) Get the software (WordPress.org is the most popular) and host your blog internally or with a hosting company.
Hosting internally provides more control over your content, updates, and is currently the only option if you plan to generate advertising revenue with your blog. Read "Build Your Blog" for more details on this software and hosting decision.
If you are working with a budget of less than $5,000, the wise decision is probably to identify which software you can afford FIRST, and then determine your content and design based on what that software provides. If your budget is $5,000 or greater, you'll have more flexibility and should determine desired features first, then choose the software and create a design based solely on your needs.
Features and Functionality - Do your homework and identify what features and functionality you want to have on your blog. In these articles, I outline 8 fundamental features and 13 must have features. Do you want to manage your own comments or use a service like Disqus? Do you want to automate a battery of "share" links into each post or choose select ones? Will you allow people to subscribe to automatically receive an email whenever you update your blog? What service will you use to do that?
Step 8: Marketing your blog.
There are countless ways to market your blog, but the key is that you actually do it. Basically you are trying to find ways to establish both creditability and visibility for your content. People have to know your blog exists and is useful. You have to remind them that it exists as often as possible and in a non-annoying way. Many of the features that are included in a blog are designed to help you drive traffic. I break the marketing job into two categories: 1) getting new readers, and 2) building loyalty amongst your existing readers. For a list of the best ways to market your blog see my post here on the top ways to market your blog.
Step 9: Monitor your traffic and analyze your success.
Establish a process (weekly, monthly or quarterly) to assess your blog's success and failures with a keen eye on what's driving each. Are you getting a lot of traffic from particular places? Boost your presence there. Are you spending a lot of energy on a particular topic that consistently gets very little traffic? Perhaps you should either stop writing about that topic or consider if you are marketing to the wrong audience. Are you not generating the advertising revenue you had hoped? Perhaps you don't have a large enough readership, or perhaps you're not making an offer that's relevant to advertisers (audience demographics, pricing, ad placement, etc.). Perhaps your going after the wrong advertisers. Make sure you assess your blog on a regular basis against the goals you defined in Step 1.
• Tools for traffic assessment will include website traffic statistics software Google Analytics or the simpler traffic statistics software that should come for free with your hosting account. Ask your hosting company how to access it.
• Once you know your site traffic, you can also benchmark it against other sites with Compete.com and Quantcast.
• For advertising rates, search competitor sites for their "advertising rate sheets" for free data or you can use paid tools such as Nielsen Adrelevance, Nielsen @plan.
Step 10: Monetize your blog.
If you choose to take the route of generating revenue from your blog, I'd like to offer some sobering information supplied by Technorati. Based on the 2009 State of Blogoshopere and 2008 State of Blogoshopere, 72 percent of respondents have not monetized their blog. Only 4 percent of respondents derive their primary source of income from their blog. In fact, the median annual revenue for the bloggers who do have advertising was $200. That means 50 percent of the respondents earn less than $200 per year from their blogs with CPMs of $1.20 or less. The top 10 percent of bloggers earn an average of $19,000 annually. The top 1 percent earn $200,000 or more. The average annual income was $75,000 for those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors per month (some of whom had more than one million visitors each month). This should provide some grounding on what to expect from monetizing a blog both in terms of dollars and traffic thresholds.
Read more here: http://www.inc.com/guides/10-step-guide-to-blogging_pagen_3.html
For many, blogging conjures up fears of being chained to one's computer spending countless hours on content that no one will read. But it doesn't have to be that way. From an online journal at 1,000 words per post to a simple 140-character Twitter feed, blogging has taken center stage largely because of how useful it has proven itself to be in almost all areas of business. Blogging can also be profitable according to research by Technorati, an Internet search engine for searching blogs, which reports that for blogs with 100,000 or more unique monthly visitors revenue averages about $75,000 annually. As a companion to my popular series on Blogging, here is a step-by-step guide to getting your blog from zero to thousands of readers.
Note: This guide doesn't touch on micro-blogging, the type of short blog posts that can be found on Twitter or on other social networking status updates. For more information on how these blogs can be helpful, read 5 Ways to Actually Make Money on Twitter.
Step 1: Determine why you are blogging.
In my post "To Blog or Not to Blog", I outlined the four reasons why a website exists to aid a business: 1) to build a brand, 2) generate leads, 3) generate direct sales, or 4) generate advertising revenue. A blog can also support any one of these goals. Which goals are you trying to accomplish with your company website and which are you trying to accomplish with your blog?
Define what success looks like? If your goal is branding, what awareness studies will you do? If your goal is advertising revenue, how much do you hope to make? How many readers and page views do you need? For lead generation, how many phone calls or e-mails do you want to get from your blog? These goals can change, but it is important to put a stake in the ground and then measure against it. Also, take a look at How Twitter Helps a CEO Run His Company for a peek at how micro-blogging (Twitter) helped this CEO gain feedback about his company.
Step 2: Determine the "concept" of your blog.
What is the niche you will write about? Who will care? Once you know WHY you are blogging, you can think about WHAT to blog about. You may go back and forth between Step 1 and Step 2 for a few rounds before making your final decision. Some people start with an idea for a blog but when they put it to the test of actually generating revenue the idea changes. Step 1 and Step 2 must work in tandem and you have to know that there is an audience for what you have to say.
Your blog concept can be very narrow, attracting a small but passionate niche of readers and few, if any, competitors, or it can focus broadly on a topic that is widely popular but has a lot of competition. Much of your decision may rely on the resources available to you and ultimately your goals. Do you have a large marketing budget, staff and resources for your blog? Do you already have access to a large audience of readers (thousands to tens of thousands of readers)? Do you have a long period of time (2-3 years) over which you can consistently devote 5-10 hours per week of writing and marketing efforts to slowly build your blog audience and subscriber base? If you answered no to all of these questions you may want to consider focusing narrowly since creating a very unique voice or speaking on a unique topic is a much easier and faster way to break through the noise than writing about the same thing that everyone else writes about.
Step 3: Will your blog be separate or integrated into your site?
This is actually two questions:
1. Will your blog be under the same domain name as your site? The benefit of this is that you will get more (search engine optimization) SEO value out of the content of your blog. Some advise putting your blog under a different domain and linking generously between the two sites in order to gain "link popularity." But link popularity is not necessarily the most important element of SEO (nor will it help you much to have many links between two sites neither of which is itself highly ranked). Having a larger amount of keyword-rich content on your site is usually far more important. Having your blog hosted under the same domain name as your site will add all of your blog content to your site content when search engines determine where to place your site in the rankings. For more about Search Engine Optimization read this detailed guide or my blog post on the topic.
2. Will your blog exist within the same software as your site? If your website is built within a Content Management System (which is usually a very good idea because updating is made easier) it is typically most useful to have your blog constructed within that same CMS. These programs, including Drupal, Joomla and WordPress, will typically allow users to build both a website and a blog. The benefit here is that you only have ONE login to access and update all of the content of your site. Plus, there's only ONE system to learn. See my post titled "Build Your Blog" for a lot more detail on different options for building your blog, including free vs. paid, self-hosted vs. blogging-company hosted, WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com, etc.
Step 4: Decide what you will write about.
There are several decisions you'll need to make somewhat in tandem:
1) Frequency – Look at your resources and determine how often you can comfortably write content. Do you plan to pay someone to write content or write it yourself? While blogging frequency varies widely, the most typical frequency is daily, weekly or monthly. The more often you post, the more traffic you'll get.
2) Content – Now comes the part where you actually have to write something. It will be harder than you think. My strong recommendation is to compose your first five posts ahead of time and post them according to the schedule you devise. From there, you can determine if your frequency is realistic. Don't forget the power of headlines - a great headline will do a lot to attract readers. A great resource to help you with headline writing, copywriting or even blasting writer's block is CopyBlogger.
NOTE: It never hurts to take a cue from the experts. We've rounded up a list of 19 bloggers who not only provide great tips for your business but are also provide good examples of how to do it right.
3) Content Organization – Some content can be organized in topic categories while it may make sense for other blogs to be listed by date. If your style is more of a personal journal like the author of Dooce.com, categories won't make as much sense. Dooce blogger Heather Armstrong writes about whatever is on her mind at the moment so chronology works best.
4. Call to Action – How will you engage your readers to reach your ROI? Here are some phrases to include in your blog:
• Join my email list
• Download my ebook
• Buy my product
• Sign up for my service
• Call or email me for a consultation
• Buy advertising on this blog
• Connect with me on various social sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace etc.)
• Visit my store or office
• Come meet me at this live event
Integrate the calls to action that make sense for your needs into both the content and design of your blog. Your calls to action should impact your success goals from Step 1. If success for your blog is just having 10,000 readers per month, then your calls to action will focus heavily on marketing to new audiences and keeping existing readers happy. You can accomplish that by making content easy to find, highly engaging and being available to your audience.
Step 5: Determing your process.
Will your blog be managed by a single person (i.e. you are a solo entrepreneur) or will each blog post be reviewed by senior management? Who will be responsible for updating blog posts? These questions will affect frequency. This article on Blogging for Business highlights the things to beware of in establishing your blogging process, matching it to your goals and maintaining transparency and authenticity.
Step 6: Design your blog.
Now that you have an idea of what your calls to action will be, you have some actual content that can be used and you know the purpose of your blog you can determine design. If you are working with a budget of less than $5,000, I would strongly recommend working with a pre-designed template. You can either modify the template as needed or use the template as is. A custom template can be expensive when done well or not very good if done cheaply. You will often be far better off getting all the built-in testing, browser compatibility, features and functionality of a well made pre-designed template.
Step 7: Building your blog.
What software will you use and where will you host your blog? You have two options: 1) Host your blog with a third-party blog service provider like WordPress.com or Blogger.com; or 2) Get the software (WordPress.org is the most popular) and host your blog internally or with a hosting company.
Hosting internally provides more control over your content, updates, and is currently the only option if you plan to generate advertising revenue with your blog. Read "Build Your Blog" for more details on this software and hosting decision.
If you are working with a budget of less than $5,000, the wise decision is probably to identify which software you can afford FIRST, and then determine your content and design based on what that software provides. If your budget is $5,000 or greater, you'll have more flexibility and should determine desired features first, then choose the software and create a design based solely on your needs.
Features and Functionality - Do your homework and identify what features and functionality you want to have on your blog. In these articles, I outline 8 fundamental features and 13 must have features. Do you want to manage your own comments or use a service like Disqus? Do you want to automate a battery of "share" links into each post or choose select ones? Will you allow people to subscribe to automatically receive an email whenever you update your blog? What service will you use to do that?
Step 8: Marketing your blog.
There are countless ways to market your blog, but the key is that you actually do it. Basically you are trying to find ways to establish both creditability and visibility for your content. People have to know your blog exists and is useful. You have to remind them that it exists as often as possible and in a non-annoying way. Many of the features that are included in a blog are designed to help you drive traffic. I break the marketing job into two categories: 1) getting new readers, and 2) building loyalty amongst your existing readers. For a list of the best ways to market your blog see my post here on the top ways to market your blog.
Step 9: Monitor your traffic and analyze your success.
Establish a process (weekly, monthly or quarterly) to assess your blog's success and failures with a keen eye on what's driving each. Are you getting a lot of traffic from particular places? Boost your presence there. Are you spending a lot of energy on a particular topic that consistently gets very little traffic? Perhaps you should either stop writing about that topic or consider if you are marketing to the wrong audience. Are you not generating the advertising revenue you had hoped? Perhaps you don't have a large enough readership, or perhaps you're not making an offer that's relevant to advertisers (audience demographics, pricing, ad placement, etc.). Perhaps your going after the wrong advertisers. Make sure you assess your blog on a regular basis against the goals you defined in Step 1.
• Tools for traffic assessment will include website traffic statistics software Google Analytics or the simpler traffic statistics software that should come for free with your hosting account. Ask your hosting company how to access it.
• Once you know your site traffic, you can also benchmark it against other sites with Compete.com and Quantcast.
• For advertising rates, search competitor sites for their "advertising rate sheets" for free data or you can use paid tools such as Nielsen Adrelevance, Nielsen @plan.
Step 10: Monetize your blog.
If you choose to take the route of generating revenue from your blog, I'd like to offer some sobering information supplied by Technorati. Based on the 2009 State of Blogoshopere and 2008 State of Blogoshopere, 72 percent of respondents have not monetized their blog. Only 4 percent of respondents derive their primary source of income from their blog. In fact, the median annual revenue for the bloggers who do have advertising was $200. That means 50 percent of the respondents earn less than $200 per year from their blogs with CPMs of $1.20 or less. The top 10 percent of bloggers earn an average of $19,000 annually. The top 1 percent earn $200,000 or more. The average annual income was $75,000 for those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors per month (some of whom had more than one million visitors each month). This should provide some grounding on what to expect from monetizing a blog both in terms of dollars and traffic thresholds.
Read more here: http://www.inc.com/guides/10-step-guide-to-blogging_pagen_3.html
Analysts Think A Facebook AdSense Is Inevitable
Analysts expect Facebook to eventually launch an external ad network – some Facebook-powered version of AdSense.
A blog post from Hunch co-founder/CEO Chris Dixon made its way to Techmeme, sharing a section from a recent Goldman Sachs analyst report, saying, “We believe there are three obvious opportunities that the company could leverage its platform to capitalize on.” These include developing an external ad network, monetizing paid search, and entering China.
“Of the three options, search is clearly the most interesting,” says Dixon. “An external ad network is inevitable. Google proved this model with Adsense. With an already huge base of advertisers bidding on CPCs, it is impossible for most other ad networks to compete on publisher payouts. But Facebook’s traffic is so great now that an external ad network might increase their revenues by 2x or so. The same goes for entering China. They might get another half a billion users who monetize at lower ad rates than US users. Neither move would put them in Google’s revenue range. They need a better business model for that. The only (known) models that deliver RPMs high enough to compete with Google are search, payments, and e-commerce.”
We’ve been talking about both a Facebook search engine and a Facebook AdSense-like offering for years. CEO Mark Zuckerberg essentially confirmed last week that at least one of those is happening. At the TechCrunch disrupt event on Tuesday, he’s quoted as saying, “We’re basically doing 1 billion queries a day and we’re not even trying…Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have. At some point we’ll do it. We have a team working on it.”
Will the other happen? If you ask me, it’s kind of shocking that it hasn’t already. The scenario came back into Blogosphere discussion with Facebook’s IPO as investors and analysts contemplated how Facebook might increase its revenue substantially.
TechCrunch’s Josh Constine speculated about it in May, saying, “Facebook’s ad network [would] essentially turn ad real estate on any website into places to serve the campaigns that advertisers buy for display on Facebook.com. Anyone currently logged into Facebook who visits one of these sites would be shown ads targeted by their Facebook information, such as age, gender, location, work and education history, interests, app usage, and friends. Facebook and the site hosting an ad would then split the money made on clicks or impressions.”
I said at the time that it seems even more likely that this would happen than Facebook getting into search, yet here we are with Facebook apparently getting into search, so I’ll ask again, how can Facebook possibly not launch some kind of external ad network?
As Constine pointed out, Facebook revised its privacy policy to expand its ability to serve ads to its users while they’re outside of Facebook.com.
read more here: http://www.webpronews.com/analysts-think-a-facebook-adsense-is-inevitable-2012-09
A blog post from Hunch co-founder/CEO Chris Dixon made its way to Techmeme, sharing a section from a recent Goldman Sachs analyst report, saying, “We believe there are three obvious opportunities that the company could leverage its platform to capitalize on.” These include developing an external ad network, monetizing paid search, and entering China.
“Of the three options, search is clearly the most interesting,” says Dixon. “An external ad network is inevitable. Google proved this model with Adsense. With an already huge base of advertisers bidding on CPCs, it is impossible for most other ad networks to compete on publisher payouts. But Facebook’s traffic is so great now that an external ad network might increase their revenues by 2x or so. The same goes for entering China. They might get another half a billion users who monetize at lower ad rates than US users. Neither move would put them in Google’s revenue range. They need a better business model for that. The only (known) models that deliver RPMs high enough to compete with Google are search, payments, and e-commerce.”
We’ve been talking about both a Facebook search engine and a Facebook AdSense-like offering for years. CEO Mark Zuckerberg essentially confirmed last week that at least one of those is happening. At the TechCrunch disrupt event on Tuesday, he’s quoted as saying, “We’re basically doing 1 billion queries a day and we’re not even trying…Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have. At some point we’ll do it. We have a team working on it.”
Will the other happen? If you ask me, it’s kind of shocking that it hasn’t already. The scenario came back into Blogosphere discussion with Facebook’s IPO as investors and analysts contemplated how Facebook might increase its revenue substantially.
TechCrunch’s Josh Constine speculated about it in May, saying, “Facebook’s ad network [would] essentially turn ad real estate on any website into places to serve the campaigns that advertisers buy for display on Facebook.com. Anyone currently logged into Facebook who visits one of these sites would be shown ads targeted by their Facebook information, such as age, gender, location, work and education history, interests, app usage, and friends. Facebook and the site hosting an ad would then split the money made on clicks or impressions.”
I said at the time that it seems even more likely that this would happen than Facebook getting into search, yet here we are with Facebook apparently getting into search, so I’ll ask again, how can Facebook possibly not launch some kind of external ad network?
As Constine pointed out, Facebook revised its privacy policy to expand its ability to serve ads to its users while they’re outside of Facebook.com.
read more here: http://www.webpronews.com/analysts-think-a-facebook-adsense-is-inevitable-2012-09
AdSense For Feeds Internet marketing tool latest to go in Google cull
By Jack Adams |
In a bid to streamline the tools and services it offers, Google has revealed that it is culling a number of its less successful offerings.
Having previously closed down Google Apps for Teams, Google Video for Business and Google Listen back in August, the search engine giant has stated that AdSense For Feeds – an Internet marketing tool that allows advertisers to display ads in RSS feeds - Classic Plus, Places for Android and Spreadsheet Gadgets will all experience the same fate.
It has also stated that +1 Reports in Google Webmaster Tools will no longer be available, whilst the Picasa image service is set to become part of Google Drive. This means that users of Google Drive will have 5GB to store their Picasa images and their Drive files.
Senior engineering director, Yossi Matias, explained in a blog post entitled “Spring Cleaning” on the official Google blog: “Technology offers so many opportunities to help improve users’ lives. This means it is really important to focus or we end up doing too much with too little impact. So today we’re winding down a bunch more features – bringing the total to nearly 60 since we started our “spring” clean last fall.”
Justifying the decision to get rid of AdSense For Feeds in particular, he continued: “AdSense For Feeds was designed to help publishers earn revenue from their content by placing ads on their RSS feeds. Starting October 2, we’ll begin to retire this feature – and on December 3 we’ll close it. Publishers can continue to use FeedBurner URLs powered by Google, so they won’t need to redirect subscribers to different URLs.”
Read more here: http://www.clickthrough-marketing.com/adsense-for-feeds-internet-marketing-tool-latest-to-go-in-google-cull-800611058/
In a bid to streamline the tools and services it offers, Google has revealed that it is culling a number of its less successful offerings.
Having previously closed down Google Apps for Teams, Google Video for Business and Google Listen back in August, the search engine giant has stated that AdSense For Feeds – an Internet marketing tool that allows advertisers to display ads in RSS feeds - Classic Plus, Places for Android and Spreadsheet Gadgets will all experience the same fate.
It has also stated that +1 Reports in Google Webmaster Tools will no longer be available, whilst the Picasa image service is set to become part of Google Drive. This means that users of Google Drive will have 5GB to store their Picasa images and their Drive files.
Senior engineering director, Yossi Matias, explained in a blog post entitled “Spring Cleaning” on the official Google blog: “Technology offers so many opportunities to help improve users’ lives. This means it is really important to focus or we end up doing too much with too little impact. So today we’re winding down a bunch more features – bringing the total to nearly 60 since we started our “spring” clean last fall.”
Justifying the decision to get rid of AdSense For Feeds in particular, he continued: “AdSense For Feeds was designed to help publishers earn revenue from their content by placing ads on their RSS feeds. Starting October 2, we’ll begin to retire this feature – and on December 3 we’ll close it. Publishers can continue to use FeedBurner URLs powered by Google, so they won’t need to redirect subscribers to different URLs.”
Read more here: http://www.clickthrough-marketing.com/adsense-for-feeds-internet-marketing-tool-latest-to-go-in-google-cull-800611058/
Top Tips For Optimizing Google AdSense Ads On Your Blog
Setting up Google AdSense is the dream for many bloggers, especially beginners. The reason for this is, most people either don't know about, or don't have any alternate sources of income for their blogs. Hence, AdSense has become their go-to place when it comes to making a living online. A lot of people have asked me this; how to use AdSense correctly and earn more money through it? Indeed, when you think about it, it's no piece of cake. It requires much thinking and effort to do it correctly. From choosing the right colors to reducing you bounce rate, there's indeed a lot that can be done. In this post, I'll hopefully address some of the problems that people face.
Before starting off...
Patience, my friend. Some people, especially beginners, seem eager to set up AdSense ads. Too eager, in fact. So much so that they set up ads merely weeks after setting up their blogs, if they get approved, that is. What most fail to understand is, a high traffic is the key to AdSense. You can only benefit from these ads if you have a decent amount of traffic flowing. Prematurely setting up ads may do more harm than good. Not only will you generate little income, you existing traffic will stall as well. Why? Well,think about why Wikipedia is the leading source of information. It has no ads! Even if they were to start advertising now, it wouldn't make much of a difference. But sites that start anew, but incorporate ads from the very start lost their credibility.
Secondly, earning online is a game of patience, where the impatient often tend to lose. Rushing into things will make things messy. The messier they are, the harder it is to extricate oneself from them. So being patient might pay off. Besides patience, you need to have determination, and the will power to work hard every day. And be ready to accept what you are getting. You need to make sure that you have a similar mind-set before setting up ads on your website.
Optimizing your AdSense Ads
The "Above-The-Fold" strategy
'Above-the-fold' refers to the visible part of a newspaper or magazine that is lying folded on a shelf or a table. In other words, its the area where the eyes first snap to. When a visitor lands on your page, he/she first looks at the top, left side of your website. Normally, this is where your page header and/or site navigation lies. If possible, use an ad banner directly below your header. People need to see your ads if they are going to click on them.
Don't use any other major ad blocks in this region, though. Your site should not look cluttered with ad banners right from the top. A banner at the top and a smaller block in the sidebar is the maximum you should use. If your site looks cluttered with ads, your bounce rate may increase alarmingly, which should not be allowed.
A word about ad units
Opinion from various bloggers shows that the most popular ad blocks are; 330x250 for images, 336x280 for text ads, and 160x600 for side-bar banners. Use these different ad block sizes for the best performance.
Ad placement
Aside from using ads in the above the fold region, you can place ads in other key areas. For example, above your posts as on this very page. Don't place ads in the middle of your content though. This is very annoying, even to a blogger-sympathetic person like me :P.
Click for more info; Best AdSense Ad Locations and Ad Formats To Earn Handsome Revenue
Multiple ad units?
Also, use a reasonable number of ad blocks. Don't use too many ads blocks. Google AdSense puts a limit on this number in the first place. But that doesn't mean you have to cap that limit. Just don't use so many ads that your website looks cluttered.
Colors - very important!
Most people over-look the importance of this simple point. Try out different color schemes with your ads. Contrasting colors are generally preferred. Some people try to fool their audience by using the same ad colors as their blog theme, and putting the ads hidden between their content. This does not fare well with the audience. Your ads must be clearly visible. Don't try to mess with the ads though. Adding stuff like borders won't make Google happy.
Follow the rules!
Google AdSense has some very strict rules and terms of services. Make sure you read them and adhere to them. In case of any violation, your account might get banned, which is one of Google's favorite things to do. Don't give them any reason. Don't click on your own ads, don't over-use ad blocks, don't use pop-up ads, etc.
Use images
People search for images almost as much as they search for text. Therefore, it is highly likely that visitors would stumble upon your ads through an image search. Upload high quality images to your log to increase your traffic and generating more income.
Don't try to be smart :)
You might be smart,but Google is smarter. It isn't the leading analytics provider without a reason. Using dynamic IPs and proxys to click on your own ads can still land you in trouble. Asking your friends to click daily won't do much good either. Google carefully monitors the click-through rate to audience ratio from a particular country. So if you are planning to out smart Google, forget it. You will most likely end up in trouble.
read more here: http://www.mybloggertricks.com/2012/04/top-tips-for-optimizing-google-adsense.html
Before starting off...
Patience, my friend. Some people, especially beginners, seem eager to set up AdSense ads. Too eager, in fact. So much so that they set up ads merely weeks after setting up their blogs, if they get approved, that is. What most fail to understand is, a high traffic is the key to AdSense. You can only benefit from these ads if you have a decent amount of traffic flowing. Prematurely setting up ads may do more harm than good. Not only will you generate little income, you existing traffic will stall as well. Why? Well,think about why Wikipedia is the leading source of information. It has no ads! Even if they were to start advertising now, it wouldn't make much of a difference. But sites that start anew, but incorporate ads from the very start lost their credibility.
Secondly, earning online is a game of patience, where the impatient often tend to lose. Rushing into things will make things messy. The messier they are, the harder it is to extricate oneself from them. So being patient might pay off. Besides patience, you need to have determination, and the will power to work hard every day. And be ready to accept what you are getting. You need to make sure that you have a similar mind-set before setting up ads on your website.
Optimizing your AdSense Ads
The "Above-The-Fold" strategy
'Above-the-fold' refers to the visible part of a newspaper or magazine that is lying folded on a shelf or a table. In other words, its the area where the eyes first snap to. When a visitor lands on your page, he/she first looks at the top, left side of your website. Normally, this is where your page header and/or site navigation lies. If possible, use an ad banner directly below your header. People need to see your ads if they are going to click on them.
Don't use any other major ad blocks in this region, though. Your site should not look cluttered with ad banners right from the top. A banner at the top and a smaller block in the sidebar is the maximum you should use. If your site looks cluttered with ads, your bounce rate may increase alarmingly, which should not be allowed.
A word about ad units
Opinion from various bloggers shows that the most popular ad blocks are; 330x250 for images, 336x280 for text ads, and 160x600 for side-bar banners. Use these different ad block sizes for the best performance.
Ad placement
Aside from using ads in the above the fold region, you can place ads in other key areas. For example, above your posts as on this very page. Don't place ads in the middle of your content though. This is very annoying, even to a blogger-sympathetic person like me :P.
Click for more info; Best AdSense Ad Locations and Ad Formats To Earn Handsome Revenue
Multiple ad units?
Also, use a reasonable number of ad blocks. Don't use too many ads blocks. Google AdSense puts a limit on this number in the first place. But that doesn't mean you have to cap that limit. Just don't use so many ads that your website looks cluttered.
Colors - very important!
Most people over-look the importance of this simple point. Try out different color schemes with your ads. Contrasting colors are generally preferred. Some people try to fool their audience by using the same ad colors as their blog theme, and putting the ads hidden between their content. This does not fare well with the audience. Your ads must be clearly visible. Don't try to mess with the ads though. Adding stuff like borders won't make Google happy.
Follow the rules!
Google AdSense has some very strict rules and terms of services. Make sure you read them and adhere to them. In case of any violation, your account might get banned, which is one of Google's favorite things to do. Don't give them any reason. Don't click on your own ads, don't over-use ad blocks, don't use pop-up ads, etc.
Use images
People search for images almost as much as they search for text. Therefore, it is highly likely that visitors would stumble upon your ads through an image search. Upload high quality images to your log to increase your traffic and generating more income.
Don't try to be smart :)
You might be smart,but Google is smarter. It isn't the leading analytics provider without a reason. Using dynamic IPs and proxys to click on your own ads can still land you in trouble. Asking your friends to click daily won't do much good either. Google carefully monitors the click-through rate to audience ratio from a particular country. So if you are planning to out smart Google, forget it. You will most likely end up in trouble.
read more here: http://www.mybloggertricks.com/2012/04/top-tips-for-optimizing-google-adsense.html
Tips to Increase Google AdSense Earnings
a. Strictly follow the rules mentioned in Adsense policies. You will always earn more revenue from Adsense by playing it clean.
b. Never modify the Google Adsense HTML code. If have trouble embedding AdSense code in your WordPress or Blogger template, take help of the AdSense support forums or send an email to your AdSense account manager.
c. Never ask your friends or visitors to click on your Google ads. Google takes click fraud very seriously. Do not include incentives of any kind on your site for users to click on your ads. Don't label Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements.".
d. Don't click on your own ads - Google is much smarter than you think and can discover invalid clicks through IP addresses, site navigation patterns, etc. If you working on a new design for your site, avoid reloading your pages (with AdSense) excessively. You can turn off AdSense temporarily and avoid invalid CPM impressions. Or you can use the unofficial Google Adsense Sandbox Tool that is accessible from Firefox, IE and other browsers to see what kind of Google ads will be served based on content (website address URL) or keywords.
e. Don't place ads in pop-up windows, error pages or even empty pages. Update: With the new AdSense policy change, you can probably place ads on 404 pages. Check with the AdSense support team.
f. Don't start a "adsense asbestos" or "home equity loan rates" website merely to make money from accidental clicks. You will never make money out these Made for Adsense websites. Instead, write on topics what you are passionate about. Don't waste your money on high-paying adsense keywords lists. Stay away from AdSense Adwords arbitrage.
g. For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above the content.
h. For long articles, CTR will improve if you place ads somewhere in middle of the content or just where the article ends - when visitors are done reading the article, they may be looking for related resources.
i. Use Text Ads instead of Image Ads as users get more options and the payout is often higher. If you still want to display image ads (for CPM), consider ad formats like the 300x250 medium rectangle or the 160x600 wide skyscraper as they support also support rich multimedia and the new gadget ads.
j. Google Ads with no background color and no borders will always perform better. Make the border color and background color same as your page background color.
k. Always put ads above the main fold. Make sure that the ad unit with the highest clickthrough rate is the first instance of the ad code that appears in your HTML source. Since the first ad unit is always filled before the rest, you want to make sure that ad unit is located in the best placement on your page.
l. Try setting the ad link URL color to a lighter shade. If your text is black, you may make the adlink as light gray or something like #666.
m. Go Wide - The large rectangle (336x280) is the best paying Adsense format especially for text ads. Try using the 336x280 large rectangle, 300x250 medium rectangle, or 160x600 wide skyscraper.
n. Don't places images next to Google ads as that will invite a permanent ban to your AdSense account.
o. Blend AdLinks with other navigation links or place horizontal adlinks at the top of your webpage. AdSense publishers are permitted to click on link unit topics on their web pages, provided that they do not click on any Google ads on the resulting page.
p. You should try adding a unit near the comments senction of your blog. See more AdSense tweaks.
q. You can put upto 3 adsense units on a page. Try putting a large skyscraper on the right navigation sidebar of your website. That area is close to the browser scrollbar. You can also add 2 AdSense for search boxes and 3 adlink units.
r. The first few lines of your content are an important factor for determining what Ads are served on your webpage. That's the right place to put keywords in bold (strong or <b> tags) or header tags (h1, h2, etc).
s. Always select the setting to open Google Adsense search box results in a new browser window, so you won't lose your visitors. Click the Open search results in a new browser window checkbox and this add target="google_window" to your form tag.
t. Maximum people think the search box is on the top right corner. So you know where to put it.
u. Always syndicate full text RSS feeds and then monetize your feeds with a 468x60 ad in RSS feeds.
v. Monitor the AdSense performance of individual web pages with Google Analytics
w. For low CTR pages, try changing titles or adding more relevant content to get better focused ads. Alse see: Get relevant Google Ads
x. Block low paying advertisers with Filters. Why to loose a visitor for an ad that will only pay you a cent. Use Overture or Google Adwords Keywords tool to discover keywords that are less popular with advertisers.
y. Learn how to implement AdSense Revenue sharing if you run a site with multiple authors and need to pay your writers based on advertising revenue generated from their articles.
z. Experiment with color schemes and layouts using split testing. You are the best judge when it comes to choosing ad formats for your own website.
read more here: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/09/z-adsense-tips-for-increasing-revenue.html
b. Never modify the Google Adsense HTML code. If have trouble embedding AdSense code in your WordPress or Blogger template, take help of the AdSense support forums or send an email to your AdSense account manager.
c. Never ask your friends or visitors to click on your Google ads. Google takes click fraud very seriously. Do not include incentives of any kind on your site for users to click on your ads. Don't label Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements.".
d. Don't click on your own ads - Google is much smarter than you think and can discover invalid clicks through IP addresses, site navigation patterns, etc. If you working on a new design for your site, avoid reloading your pages (with AdSense) excessively. You can turn off AdSense temporarily and avoid invalid CPM impressions. Or you can use the unofficial Google Adsense Sandbox Tool that is accessible from Firefox, IE and other browsers to see what kind of Google ads will be served based on content (website address URL) or keywords.
e. Don't place ads in pop-up windows, error pages or even empty pages. Update: With the new AdSense policy change, you can probably place ads on 404 pages. Check with the AdSense support team.
f. Don't start a "adsense asbestos" or "home equity loan rates" website merely to make money from accidental clicks. You will never make money out these Made for Adsense websites. Instead, write on topics what you are passionate about. Don't waste your money on high-paying adsense keywords lists. Stay away from AdSense Adwords arbitrage.
g. For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above the content.
h. For long articles, CTR will improve if you place ads somewhere in middle of the content or just where the article ends - when visitors are done reading the article, they may be looking for related resources.
i. Use Text Ads instead of Image Ads as users get more options and the payout is often higher. If you still want to display image ads (for CPM), consider ad formats like the 300x250 medium rectangle or the 160x600 wide skyscraper as they support also support rich multimedia and the new gadget ads.
j. Google Ads with no background color and no borders will always perform better. Make the border color and background color same as your page background color.
k. Always put ads above the main fold. Make sure that the ad unit with the highest clickthrough rate is the first instance of the ad code that appears in your HTML source. Since the first ad unit is always filled before the rest, you want to make sure that ad unit is located in the best placement on your page.
l. Try setting the ad link URL color to a lighter shade. If your text is black, you may make the adlink as light gray or something like #666.
m. Go Wide - The large rectangle (336x280) is the best paying Adsense format especially for text ads. Try using the 336x280 large rectangle, 300x250 medium rectangle, or 160x600 wide skyscraper.
n. Don't places images next to Google ads as that will invite a permanent ban to your AdSense account.
o. Blend AdLinks with other navigation links or place horizontal adlinks at the top of your webpage. AdSense publishers are permitted to click on link unit topics on their web pages, provided that they do not click on any Google ads on the resulting page.
p. You should try adding a unit near the comments senction of your blog. See more AdSense tweaks.
q. You can put upto 3 adsense units on a page. Try putting a large skyscraper on the right navigation sidebar of your website. That area is close to the browser scrollbar. You can also add 2 AdSense for search boxes and 3 adlink units.
r. The first few lines of your content are an important factor for determining what Ads are served on your webpage. That's the right place to put keywords in bold (strong or <b> tags) or header tags (h1, h2, etc).
s. Always select the setting to open Google Adsense search box results in a new browser window, so you won't lose your visitors. Click the Open search results in a new browser window checkbox and this add target="google_window" to your form tag.
t. Maximum people think the search box is on the top right corner. So you know where to put it.
u. Always syndicate full text RSS feeds and then monetize your feeds with a 468x60 ad in RSS feeds.
v. Monitor the AdSense performance of individual web pages with Google Analytics
w. For low CTR pages, try changing titles or adding more relevant content to get better focused ads. Alse see: Get relevant Google Ads
x. Block low paying advertisers with Filters. Why to loose a visitor for an ad that will only pay you a cent. Use Overture or Google Adwords Keywords tool to discover keywords that are less popular with advertisers.
y. Learn how to implement AdSense Revenue sharing if you run a site with multiple authors and need to pay your writers based on advertising revenue generated from their articles.
z. Experiment with color schemes and layouts using split testing. You are the best judge when it comes to choosing ad formats for your own website.
read more here: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/09/z-adsense-tips-for-increasing-revenue.html
10 SEO Techniques All Top Web Sites Should Use
This post focused on elements relating to design, content and development. This time, we’ll move onto the important issue of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO is such a hot topic these days. How do you get your web site within the first page or two of the search engines? How do you increase your Google page rank?
There are companies who dedicate themselves full time to doing SEO at a pretty penny. Something a lot of people can’t necessarily afford to pay for or spend the time on.
However, there are some simple things you can do when building your site that will help increase your chances of having good results. In no particular order, below are 10 of these items…
1. Title Tag
Near the very top of a web site’s source code you’ll find various meta tags — the standard ones being the Title, Description and Keyword tags. The title tag is technically not a meta tag, though it is commonly associated with them. The title tag plays such a large role in the indexing of your web site, that it is considered the most important of the three.
A page title is the first thing a search engine will look at when determining just what the particular page is about. It is also the first thing potential visitors will see when looking at your search engine listing.
It’s important to include a keyword or two in the title tag — but don’t go overboard – you don’t want to do what’s known as “keyword stuffing” which does nothing but make your web site look like spam. Most people will include either the company name, or title of the particular page here, as well.
2. Meta Tags
There are two primary meta tags in terms of SEO — the description and the keyword tag. It’s debatable whether the search engines use the description tag as far as ranking your results. However it is one of the more important tags because it is listed in your search result — it is what users read when your link comes up and what makes them decide whether or not to click on your link.
Be sure to include a few relevant keywords in this tag, but don’t stuff it with keywords either. The description tag should read like a sentence — not a keyword list.
Due to “keyword stuffing” many search engines now completely disregard the keyword tag. It is no longer nearly as important as it was years ago, however it doesn’t hurt to include them in your source code.
When creating your keyword list, you’ll want to think of the specific terms people will type in when searching for a site like yours. Just don’t go overboard — too many duplicates are not a good thing (as in “web designer” “web designers” “custom web designer” “html web designer” “your state here web designer” – you get the idea). Those are all basically the same, so pick one or two variations at the most and move onto the next keyword.
3. Proper Use of Heading Tags
This is a very important element to consider when writing out your site copy. Use of heading tags helps users, web browsers and search engines alike know where the major key points of your copy are.
Your main page title should use the <h1> tag — this shows what your page is about. Use of additional tags, such as <h2> and <h3> are equally important by helping to break down your copy. For one, you’ll see a visual break in the text. But as far as the search engines are concerned, it will automatically know what your topics are on a page. The various heading tags give a priority to the content and help index your site properly.
4. Alt Attributes on Images
Putting alt attributes on your images actually serves two purposes. In terms of SEO, putting a brief yet descriptive alt attribute along with your image, places additional relevant text to your source code that the search engines can see when indexing your site. The more relevant text on your page the better chance you have of achieving higher search engine rankings.
In addition, including image alt attributes help the visually impaired who access web sites using a screen reader. They can’t see the image, but with a descriptive alt attribute, they will be able to know what your image is.
5. Title Attributes on Links
Including title attributes on links is another important step that any good web site will have. That’s the little “tool tip” that pops up when you place your mouse over a link. These are especially important for image links, but equally useful for text links.
As a note, you should use descriptive text for your links. “Click here” doesn’t really tell a person – or more importantly, the search engines — what the link is. At the very least put a title tag that will explain that “Click Here” really means “Web Design Portfolio” for example. Better yet – make the main link text something like “View my web design portfolio” — this will give some value to the link showing that the resulting page is relevant to searches for portfolio’s.
6. XML Sitemap
My last post referenced the sitemaps used by web visitors to help them navigate through your site themselves. However, there’s another version — XML sitemaps — that are used by the search engines in order to index through your site, as well.
This list of ALL pages / posts / etc. of your site also includes information such as the date the page was last modified, as well as a priority number of what you feel the most important pages of your sites are. All elements that help the search engines properly find and link to all content of your site.
7. Relevant Content
Having content relevant to your main page or site topic is perhaps the most important SEO aspect of a page. You can put all the keywords you want in the meta tags and alt image tags, etc — but if the actual readable text on the page is not relevant to the target keywords, it ends up basically being a futile attempt.
While it is important to include as many keywords in your page copy as possible, it is equally as important for it to read well and make sense. I’m sure we’ve all seen keyword stuffed pages written by SEO companies that honestly don’t make much sense from the reader’s point of view.
When creating your site copy, just write naturally, explaining whatever information you’re discussing. The key is to make it relevant, and to have it make sense to the reader. Even if you trick the search engines into thinking your page is great — when a potential customer arrives at the site and can’t make heads or tails of your information and it just feels spammy to them — you can bet they’ll be clicking on the next web site within a matter of seconds.
8. Link Building
We’ve probably all heard of Google Page Rank — it seems to be every web site owner’s dream to have as high a page rank as possible. While the algorithm for determining page rank encompasses many elements, and is constantly changing, one item is the number of links pointing to your web site.
Now, you’ll want to steer clear of link farms and other spammy attempts at getting links to your site. However there are many reputable and niche directory sites that you can use to submit your web site, or specific blog articles to.
With genuine content — especially if you have a blog — you’ll be able to generate links with other web sites and blogs, as well. It’s somewhat of a give and take, in that if you link out to other sites, you’ll find sites linking back to you — and hopefully see your page rank going up, as well!
9. Social Media
Although technically not SEO, Social Media is such a growing factor in getting your web site noticed, that it’s an important element to include in your plan.
Social media ranges from social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn — to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon and many more. There is a lot of relationship building involved, but as you build your own networks and build quality content on your web site or blog, you’ll see traffic to your web site increasing, as well.
As with any relationship, it is a give and take. Don’t just expect to join a site like Twitter for the pure sake of pushing your content. That just won’t fly — your true intentions will stick out like a sore thumb and do nothing but turn people off.
Even if you are on the site purely for networking reasons, the key is to make friends. Help out members of your network if they ask for a “retweet” or Digg, give helpful advice if asked, etc. You’ll see the same in return.
If you write a great post and have built meaningful relationships with peers in your niche, you’ll often find that friends will submit your posts and give you votes on the social bookmarking sites. The more votes you receive, the more likely your post is to be noticed by others and shared around, often resulting in additional link backs from other blogs, etc.
10. A Few SEO Don’ts — Flash and Splash
Along with any list of Do’s come the Don’ts. As far as SEO is concerned, two of these items are splash pages (often consisting of a flash animation) and all flash web sites.
Yes, flash is pretty! Full flash web sites can actually be amazing to look at — their own bit of interactive artwork. But unfortunately the search engines don’t get along well with Flash. Although there is talk of possible advancement in this area, for the most part the search engines cannot read Flash.
All that great content that you wrote for your site will not be seen by the search engines if it’s embedded into a Flash web site. As far as the search engines are concerned, your all flash web site might as well be invisible. And if the search engines can’t see your site content, a good chunk of potential customers will miss out on what you have to offer, too.
Equally as “pointless” are splash pages. Once very popular, the splash page should no longer be an important feature of any site. While splash pages used to serve as an introduction into a web site (often with a flash animation), it is no longer seen as helpful, and often times might actually annoy visitors.
For one — it’s an extra click to get into your content. Worse is when you don’t give a “skip intro” option or set of links into your main site content — because you’re essentially forcing your visitors to sit through the full animation. If you’re lucky, this will only annoy them… if not — they’ll just leave without giving your main web site a shot. And without an html link pointing into your site, the search engines have no way to continue either (unless you made use of a sitemap.xml file — but still…)
A good alternative to both issues is to make use of a flash header. There’s no problem to include a flash animation at the top of your main site, or as a feature within the content area, etc. Because this is an addition to your web site, as opposed to a full separate element.
read more here: http://freelancefolder.com/10-top-seo-techniques/
SEO is such a hot topic these days. How do you get your web site within the first page or two of the search engines? How do you increase your Google page rank?
There are companies who dedicate themselves full time to doing SEO at a pretty penny. Something a lot of people can’t necessarily afford to pay for or spend the time on.
However, there are some simple things you can do when building your site that will help increase your chances of having good results. In no particular order, below are 10 of these items…
1. Title Tag
Near the very top of a web site’s source code you’ll find various meta tags — the standard ones being the Title, Description and Keyword tags. The title tag is technically not a meta tag, though it is commonly associated with them. The title tag plays such a large role in the indexing of your web site, that it is considered the most important of the three.
A page title is the first thing a search engine will look at when determining just what the particular page is about. It is also the first thing potential visitors will see when looking at your search engine listing.
It’s important to include a keyword or two in the title tag — but don’t go overboard – you don’t want to do what’s known as “keyword stuffing” which does nothing but make your web site look like spam. Most people will include either the company name, or title of the particular page here, as well.
2. Meta Tags
There are two primary meta tags in terms of SEO — the description and the keyword tag. It’s debatable whether the search engines use the description tag as far as ranking your results. However it is one of the more important tags because it is listed in your search result — it is what users read when your link comes up and what makes them decide whether or not to click on your link.
Be sure to include a few relevant keywords in this tag, but don’t stuff it with keywords either. The description tag should read like a sentence — not a keyword list.
Due to “keyword stuffing” many search engines now completely disregard the keyword tag. It is no longer nearly as important as it was years ago, however it doesn’t hurt to include them in your source code.
When creating your keyword list, you’ll want to think of the specific terms people will type in when searching for a site like yours. Just don’t go overboard — too many duplicates are not a good thing (as in “web designer” “web designers” “custom web designer” “html web designer” “your state here web designer” – you get the idea). Those are all basically the same, so pick one or two variations at the most and move onto the next keyword.
3. Proper Use of Heading Tags
This is a very important element to consider when writing out your site copy. Use of heading tags helps users, web browsers and search engines alike know where the major key points of your copy are.
Your main page title should use the <h1> tag — this shows what your page is about. Use of additional tags, such as <h2> and <h3> are equally important by helping to break down your copy. For one, you’ll see a visual break in the text. But as far as the search engines are concerned, it will automatically know what your topics are on a page. The various heading tags give a priority to the content and help index your site properly.
4. Alt Attributes on Images
Putting alt attributes on your images actually serves two purposes. In terms of SEO, putting a brief yet descriptive alt attribute along with your image, places additional relevant text to your source code that the search engines can see when indexing your site. The more relevant text on your page the better chance you have of achieving higher search engine rankings.
In addition, including image alt attributes help the visually impaired who access web sites using a screen reader. They can’t see the image, but with a descriptive alt attribute, they will be able to know what your image is.
5. Title Attributes on Links
Including title attributes on links is another important step that any good web site will have. That’s the little “tool tip” that pops up when you place your mouse over a link. These are especially important for image links, but equally useful for text links.
As a note, you should use descriptive text for your links. “Click here” doesn’t really tell a person – or more importantly, the search engines — what the link is. At the very least put a title tag that will explain that “Click Here” really means “Web Design Portfolio” for example. Better yet – make the main link text something like “View my web design portfolio” — this will give some value to the link showing that the resulting page is relevant to searches for portfolio’s.
6. XML Sitemap
My last post referenced the sitemaps used by web visitors to help them navigate through your site themselves. However, there’s another version — XML sitemaps — that are used by the search engines in order to index through your site, as well.
This list of ALL pages / posts / etc. of your site also includes information such as the date the page was last modified, as well as a priority number of what you feel the most important pages of your sites are. All elements that help the search engines properly find and link to all content of your site.
7. Relevant Content
Having content relevant to your main page or site topic is perhaps the most important SEO aspect of a page. You can put all the keywords you want in the meta tags and alt image tags, etc — but if the actual readable text on the page is not relevant to the target keywords, it ends up basically being a futile attempt.
While it is important to include as many keywords in your page copy as possible, it is equally as important for it to read well and make sense. I’m sure we’ve all seen keyword stuffed pages written by SEO companies that honestly don’t make much sense from the reader’s point of view.
When creating your site copy, just write naturally, explaining whatever information you’re discussing. The key is to make it relevant, and to have it make sense to the reader. Even if you trick the search engines into thinking your page is great — when a potential customer arrives at the site and can’t make heads or tails of your information and it just feels spammy to them — you can bet they’ll be clicking on the next web site within a matter of seconds.
8. Link Building
We’ve probably all heard of Google Page Rank — it seems to be every web site owner’s dream to have as high a page rank as possible. While the algorithm for determining page rank encompasses many elements, and is constantly changing, one item is the number of links pointing to your web site.
Now, you’ll want to steer clear of link farms and other spammy attempts at getting links to your site. However there are many reputable and niche directory sites that you can use to submit your web site, or specific blog articles to.
With genuine content — especially if you have a blog — you’ll be able to generate links with other web sites and blogs, as well. It’s somewhat of a give and take, in that if you link out to other sites, you’ll find sites linking back to you — and hopefully see your page rank going up, as well!
9. Social Media
Although technically not SEO, Social Media is such a growing factor in getting your web site noticed, that it’s an important element to include in your plan.
Social media ranges from social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn — to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon and many more. There is a lot of relationship building involved, but as you build your own networks and build quality content on your web site or blog, you’ll see traffic to your web site increasing, as well.
As with any relationship, it is a give and take. Don’t just expect to join a site like Twitter for the pure sake of pushing your content. That just won’t fly — your true intentions will stick out like a sore thumb and do nothing but turn people off.
Even if you are on the site purely for networking reasons, the key is to make friends. Help out members of your network if they ask for a “retweet” or Digg, give helpful advice if asked, etc. You’ll see the same in return.
If you write a great post and have built meaningful relationships with peers in your niche, you’ll often find that friends will submit your posts and give you votes on the social bookmarking sites. The more votes you receive, the more likely your post is to be noticed by others and shared around, often resulting in additional link backs from other blogs, etc.
10. A Few SEO Don’ts — Flash and Splash
Along with any list of Do’s come the Don’ts. As far as SEO is concerned, two of these items are splash pages (often consisting of a flash animation) and all flash web sites.
Yes, flash is pretty! Full flash web sites can actually be amazing to look at — their own bit of interactive artwork. But unfortunately the search engines don’t get along well with Flash. Although there is talk of possible advancement in this area, for the most part the search engines cannot read Flash.
All that great content that you wrote for your site will not be seen by the search engines if it’s embedded into a Flash web site. As far as the search engines are concerned, your all flash web site might as well be invisible. And if the search engines can’t see your site content, a good chunk of potential customers will miss out on what you have to offer, too.
Equally as “pointless” are splash pages. Once very popular, the splash page should no longer be an important feature of any site. While splash pages used to serve as an introduction into a web site (often with a flash animation), it is no longer seen as helpful, and often times might actually annoy visitors.
For one — it’s an extra click to get into your content. Worse is when you don’t give a “skip intro” option or set of links into your main site content — because you’re essentially forcing your visitors to sit through the full animation. If you’re lucky, this will only annoy them… if not — they’ll just leave without giving your main web site a shot. And without an html link pointing into your site, the search engines have no way to continue either (unless you made use of a sitemap.xml file — but still…)
A good alternative to both issues is to make use of a flash header. There’s no problem to include a flash animation at the top of your main site, or as a feature within the content area, etc. Because this is an addition to your web site, as opposed to a full separate element.
read more here: http://freelancefolder.com/10-top-seo-techniques/
A Beginner's Guide To Making Money Online
The internet, through its sheer size, can be a bit overwhelming for a newcomer especially if there's so many different types of lucrative opportunities out there. Follow these simple steps to get started.
STEP 1: Understand how money is made on the internet
In its simplest form, money can be made on the internet in roughly three ways:
By setting up your own web site
STEP 1: Understand how money is made on the internet
In its simplest form, money can be made on the internet in roughly three ways:
By setting up your own web site
Increase Traffic to Your Website
When we talk about increasing website traffic, we're really talking about several different things, including increasing hits, increasing pageviews, increasing sessions, and increasing unique visitors. For some sites, increasing pageviews will be the immediate goal because the concern is that the vast majority of visitors view only one page of the site, then leave. For others the immediate goal will be to increase the number of unique and return visitors.
Because there are multiple metrics available to webmasters when reporting traffic, a great deal of confusion surrounds the whole affair. Many webmasters refer to website hits when they report their traffic. While many people have asked about increasing hits, website hits are not a very good measure of the success of a site.
First, let's take a hypothetical tour of the process of measuring website traffic. Imagine Hypothetical Jim visiting the home page of a new website he learned about on Google.com. Hypothetical Jim visits the home page, then visits the "About Us" page, which he bookmarks. Later, Hypothetical Stu visits the home page, then leaves the site. Later that evening, Hypothetical Jim returns to the "About Us" page using his bookmark, and clicks on the link to the "Contact Us" page. After looking over the page, he leaves the site.
From the text description above, you can determine that: (1) the site has had 2 unique visitors, Hypothetical Jim and Hypothetical Stu; (2) the site has had three unique visitor sessions (two for Jim and one for Stu); and (3) the site has had 5 pageviews (4 by Jim and 1 by Stu). You may wonder wether to count Hypothetical Jim's second visit to the "About Us" page as a second pageview. Count it.
What you cannot determine from the description above is the number of website hits. A hit is measured every time a specific unique file (HTML files, image files, script files, frames, etc.) is downloaded. In other words, many people refer to the total number of HTTP Requests a user makes as the number of hits the site receives. Since a single web page can be made up of any number of unique files (hundreds even), measuring hits is often meaningless in measuring the success of a website.
In this hypothetical example, the homepage consists of 24 files, so web analysis software will count 24 hits every time a visitor downloads the home page. There are 21 total images, 1 script, and one CSS file (plus the index html file itself). The "About Us" page consists of 14 files, so web analysis software will count 14 hits. There are 11 images, 1 script, and one CSS file (plus the about html file itself). The same goes for the "Contact Us" page.
As you can see, website hits do not consistently correlate with unique visitors, sessions, or pageviews. The only reason to look at hits is to measure the number of HTTP requests that a browser has to make in order to view your page. Generally speaking, the larger the hit count, the slower the download. For that reason, it is best to reduce the number of hits/page until the download speed is optimized.
Because there are multiple metrics available to webmasters when reporting traffic, a great deal of confusion surrounds the whole affair. Many webmasters refer to website hits when they report their traffic. While many people have asked about increasing hits, website hits are not a very good measure of the success of a site.
First, let's take a hypothetical tour of the process of measuring website traffic. Imagine Hypothetical Jim visiting the home page of a new website he learned about on Google.com. Hypothetical Jim visits the home page, then visits the "About Us" page, which he bookmarks. Later, Hypothetical Stu visits the home page, then leaves the site. Later that evening, Hypothetical Jim returns to the "About Us" page using his bookmark, and clicks on the link to the "Contact Us" page. After looking over the page, he leaves the site.
From the text description above, you can determine that: (1) the site has had 2 unique visitors, Hypothetical Jim and Hypothetical Stu; (2) the site has had three unique visitor sessions (two for Jim and one for Stu); and (3) the site has had 5 pageviews (4 by Jim and 1 by Stu). You may wonder wether to count Hypothetical Jim's second visit to the "About Us" page as a second pageview. Count it.
What you cannot determine from the description above is the number of website hits. A hit is measured every time a specific unique file (HTML files, image files, script files, frames, etc.) is downloaded. In other words, many people refer to the total number of HTTP Requests a user makes as the number of hits the site receives. Since a single web page can be made up of any number of unique files (hundreds even), measuring hits is often meaningless in measuring the success of a website.
In this hypothetical example, the homepage consists of 24 files, so web analysis software will count 24 hits every time a visitor downloads the home page. There are 21 total images, 1 script, and one CSS file (plus the index html file itself). The "About Us" page consists of 14 files, so web analysis software will count 14 hits. There are 11 images, 1 script, and one CSS file (plus the about html file itself). The same goes for the "Contact Us" page.
As you can see, website hits do not consistently correlate with unique visitors, sessions, or pageviews. The only reason to look at hits is to measure the number of HTTP requests that a browser has to make in order to view your page. Generally speaking, the larger the hit count, the slower the download. For that reason, it is best to reduce the number of hits/page until the download speed is optimized.
How to Increase Blog Traffic – 8 Ways to Transform Your Blog into a Must Visit Destination
If you are a blogger I am going to say something here that you might balk at!
Getting traffic and prospective customers to your blog isn’t that difficult!
There, I said it. Do you agree or are you one of those in the camp that constantly struggles when it comes to knowing the exact methods of how to increase blog traffic?
In this post you will learn 8 ways to drive new visitors to your blog, but (and this is a big BUT!), you have to be consistent, thorough, unrelenting and committed to your blogging or else your blog will simply be the next ghost town.
This is a multipronged approach that includes both online and offline marketing efforts, some paid and some free. You can use these techniques to master the art of increasing traffic and bumping up conversion rates.
1. Organic Search
Google still is, and for a long time will be, the main traffic driver on the web. In order to benefit from Google’s generosity of sharing their customers, as that is essentially what search traffic is, you have to play by the search engine’s rules. Therefore getting your site to rank high remains an important way to drive traffic. Search engine optimisation is a critical strategy to drive organic search results.
2. External Links
Your website is an island a vast ocean that is the internet. In order to attract more traffic you need to build more bridges for people to come visit. These bridges are what are known as links and links play a vital role in determining the credibility of your website to the search engines.
One thing to mention here is that not all links are equal. If your site discussed pony trekking then a link from a cake baking article is not really a valid citation. If your theme is eighteen wheel trucks and you have a link from Barbie dolls, again that’s not valid. You want to make sure that the site where the link comes from is a good match for what your blog discusses.
The next three items on the list are paid methods of attracting more traffic to your blog, which if you know your conversion rate and you have a monetisation strategy then these will work for you. If you are still getting started then until you master the art of tracking and conversion which is a different topic altogether then you might want to skip to number 6.
3. PPC Advertising
Paid keywords, such as Google Adwords, have proven themselves to be cost effective methods for driving targeted traffic to your site. Although cost can be prohibitive for many niches, providing you know your conversion rates and are constantly testing and tweaking, adwords is a way to drive instant targeted traffic to your site.
Google offers a lot of resources to help small business owners learn everything from the basics of using adwords to mastering advanced user strategies and tips. Google Adwords Small Business Center
4. Affiliate Traffic.
Affiliate traffic is when you pay a third party a referral fee for getting targeted traffic to your site. Affiliates use their own online marketing techniques, methods and internet real estate to advertise your product or service and send the traffic to your site. You may not want to take on this task until you are more established as affiliates want to know expected conversions in return for their investment.
5. Paid Banner Advertising
Banners are perhaps the oldest form of advertising on the internet. They act much like billboards in real life. You place a banner in an area of high traffic and when some someone shows interest in what you are offering then they click through and are taken immediately to your site or landing page.
6. Offline efforts
Not everything you do has to stay online. Promoting your site offline though business cards and networking can help drive traffic to your blog.
Every time you meet someone who you feel could benefit from your content then let them know that you blog and direct them there. If something comes up in a conversation that you have covered on your blog, say , “I wrote a blog about that you should check it out” or after the event drop that person an email.
“We were talking about offline marketing efforts during the networking event and I thought I would share a blog I wrote discussing the exact same issue. Once you have read it leave me a comment at the bottom to let me know your thoughts”
The more people that know about your blog the more likely other people are to find and share it and at the same time you establish yourself as a thought leader.
7. Content
If you don’t have any content then there is no reason for people to check out your site. They’ll hit back on their browser and move on.
Quality content is absolutely fundamental to the success of your blog. Having bad content is like inviting people to a party and then telling them that there is no food or drink. People get disgruntled and leave.
Give people a strong reason to visit but more importantly to stay, subscribe and share. If you don’t have the content then this will not happen, so prior to inviting people and certainly before attempting any of the paid advertising methods make sure there is plenty of juicy content for people to find.
8. Email Newsletters.
When you have gone through all the hard work of attracting people to your site then you want to be in a position to take that relationship to the next level. For some that may be buying your product or service or joining your membership program, but whatever it is you want to get people to subscribe to your email list.
People who have subscribed to your email list have shown an interest in what you do and what you talk about. They have expressed a desire to learn more about you and these are the most valuable type of blog readers.
When you publish a new blog you can send your subscribers an email to let them know you have new content for them to consume. If you make the email compelling enough then you will automatically have a flood of traffic to your blog.
Read more here: http://socialmediatoday.com/node/567071
Getting traffic and prospective customers to your blog isn’t that difficult!
There, I said it. Do you agree or are you one of those in the camp that constantly struggles when it comes to knowing the exact methods of how to increase blog traffic?
In this post you will learn 8 ways to drive new visitors to your blog, but (and this is a big BUT!), you have to be consistent, thorough, unrelenting and committed to your blogging or else your blog will simply be the next ghost town.
This is a multipronged approach that includes both online and offline marketing efforts, some paid and some free. You can use these techniques to master the art of increasing traffic and bumping up conversion rates.
1. Organic Search
Google still is, and for a long time will be, the main traffic driver on the web. In order to benefit from Google’s generosity of sharing their customers, as that is essentially what search traffic is, you have to play by the search engine’s rules. Therefore getting your site to rank high remains an important way to drive traffic. Search engine optimisation is a critical strategy to drive organic search results.
2. External Links
Your website is an island a vast ocean that is the internet. In order to attract more traffic you need to build more bridges for people to come visit. These bridges are what are known as links and links play a vital role in determining the credibility of your website to the search engines.
One thing to mention here is that not all links are equal. If your site discussed pony trekking then a link from a cake baking article is not really a valid citation. If your theme is eighteen wheel trucks and you have a link from Barbie dolls, again that’s not valid. You want to make sure that the site where the link comes from is a good match for what your blog discusses.
The next three items on the list are paid methods of attracting more traffic to your blog, which if you know your conversion rate and you have a monetisation strategy then these will work for you. If you are still getting started then until you master the art of tracking and conversion which is a different topic altogether then you might want to skip to number 6.
3. PPC Advertising
Paid keywords, such as Google Adwords, have proven themselves to be cost effective methods for driving targeted traffic to your site. Although cost can be prohibitive for many niches, providing you know your conversion rates and are constantly testing and tweaking, adwords is a way to drive instant targeted traffic to your site.
Google offers a lot of resources to help small business owners learn everything from the basics of using adwords to mastering advanced user strategies and tips. Google Adwords Small Business Center
4. Affiliate Traffic.
Affiliate traffic is when you pay a third party a referral fee for getting targeted traffic to your site. Affiliates use their own online marketing techniques, methods and internet real estate to advertise your product or service and send the traffic to your site. You may not want to take on this task until you are more established as affiliates want to know expected conversions in return for their investment.
5. Paid Banner Advertising
Banners are perhaps the oldest form of advertising on the internet. They act much like billboards in real life. You place a banner in an area of high traffic and when some someone shows interest in what you are offering then they click through and are taken immediately to your site or landing page.
6. Offline efforts
Not everything you do has to stay online. Promoting your site offline though business cards and networking can help drive traffic to your blog.
Every time you meet someone who you feel could benefit from your content then let them know that you blog and direct them there. If something comes up in a conversation that you have covered on your blog, say , “I wrote a blog about that you should check it out” or after the event drop that person an email.
“We were talking about offline marketing efforts during the networking event and I thought I would share a blog I wrote discussing the exact same issue. Once you have read it leave me a comment at the bottom to let me know your thoughts”
The more people that know about your blog the more likely other people are to find and share it and at the same time you establish yourself as a thought leader.
7. Content
If you don’t have any content then there is no reason for people to check out your site. They’ll hit back on their browser and move on.
Quality content is absolutely fundamental to the success of your blog. Having bad content is like inviting people to a party and then telling them that there is no food or drink. People get disgruntled and leave.
Give people a strong reason to visit but more importantly to stay, subscribe and share. If you don’t have the content then this will not happen, so prior to inviting people and certainly before attempting any of the paid advertising methods make sure there is plenty of juicy content for people to find.
8. Email Newsletters.
When you have gone through all the hard work of attracting people to your site then you want to be in a position to take that relationship to the next level. For some that may be buying your product or service or joining your membership program, but whatever it is you want to get people to subscribe to your email list.
People who have subscribed to your email list have shown an interest in what you do and what you talk about. They have expressed a desire to learn more about you and these are the most valuable type of blog readers.
When you publish a new blog you can send your subscribers an email to let them know you have new content for them to consume. If you make the email compelling enough then you will automatically have a flood of traffic to your blog.
Read more here: http://socialmediatoday.com/node/567071
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Web conferencing
Web conferencing refers to a service that allows conferencing events to be shared with remote locations. In general the service is made possible by Internet technologies, particularly on TCP/IP connections. The service allows real-time point-to-point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers. It offers information of text-based messages, voice and video chat to be shared simultaneously, across geographically dispersed locations. Applications for web conferencing include meetings, training events, lectures, or short presentations from any computer.
Functionality
Some web conferencing solutions require additional software to be installed (usually via download) by the presenter and participants, while others eliminate this step by providing physical hardware or an appliance. In general, system requirements depend on the vendor. Some web conferencing services vendors provide a complete solution while others enhance existing technologies. Most also provide a means of interfacing with email and calendaring clients in order that customers can plan an event and share information about it, in advance. A participant can be either an individual person or a group. System requirements that allow individuals within a group to participate as individuals (e.g. when an audience participant asks a question) depend on the size of the group. Handling such requirements is often the responsibility of the group. Most vendors also provide either a recorded copy of an event, or a means for a subscriber to record an event. Support for planning a shared event is typically integrated with calendar and email applications. The method of controlling access to an event is provided by the vendor. Additional value-added features are included as desired by vendors who provide them. Besides exceptions (e.g. Openmeetings, TokBox, WebHuddle, BigBlueButton), web conferencing services do not apply free software but proprietary software, see Comparison of web conferencing software.
Etymology
The term webinar is short for Web-based Seminar, a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Web, specifically a portmanteau of web & seminar, to describe a specific type of web conference. Some argue that webinars might be one-way, from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction, so one-way broadcasts are perhaps more accurately called webcasts. Webinars themselves may be more collaborative and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line, while pointing out information being presented onscreen, and the audience can respond over their own telephones, speaker phones allowing the greatest comfort and convenience. There are web conferencing technologies on the market that have incorporated the use of VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) audio technology, to allow for a completely web-based communication. Depending upon the provider, webinars may provide hidden or anonymous participant functionality, making participants unaware of other participants in the same meeting.
Interactive webinars
For interactive online workshops web conferences are complemented by electronic meeting systems (EMS) which provide a range of online facilitation tools such as brainstorming and categorization, a range of voting methods or structured discussions, typically with optional anonymity. Typically, EMS do not provide core web conferencing functionality such as screen sharing or voice conferencing though some EMS can control web conferencing sessions.
Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_conferencing
Functionality
Some web conferencing solutions require additional software to be installed (usually via download) by the presenter and participants, while others eliminate this step by providing physical hardware or an appliance. In general, system requirements depend on the vendor. Some web conferencing services vendors provide a complete solution while others enhance existing technologies. Most also provide a means of interfacing with email and calendaring clients in order that customers can plan an event and share information about it, in advance. A participant can be either an individual person or a group. System requirements that allow individuals within a group to participate as individuals (e.g. when an audience participant asks a question) depend on the size of the group. Handling such requirements is often the responsibility of the group. Most vendors also provide either a recorded copy of an event, or a means for a subscriber to record an event. Support for planning a shared event is typically integrated with calendar and email applications. The method of controlling access to an event is provided by the vendor. Additional value-added features are included as desired by vendors who provide them. Besides exceptions (e.g. Openmeetings, TokBox, WebHuddle, BigBlueButton), web conferencing services do not apply free software but proprietary software, see Comparison of web conferencing software.
Etymology
The term webinar is short for Web-based Seminar, a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Web, specifically a portmanteau of web & seminar, to describe a specific type of web conference. Some argue that webinars might be one-way, from the speaker to the audience with limited audience interaction, so one-way broadcasts are perhaps more accurately called webcasts. Webinars themselves may be more collaborative and include polling and question & answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some cases, the presenter may speak over a standard telephone line, while pointing out information being presented onscreen, and the audience can respond over their own telephones, speaker phones allowing the greatest comfort and convenience. There are web conferencing technologies on the market that have incorporated the use of VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) audio technology, to allow for a completely web-based communication. Depending upon the provider, webinars may provide hidden or anonymous participant functionality, making participants unaware of other participants in the same meeting.
Interactive webinars
For interactive online workshops web conferences are complemented by electronic meeting systems (EMS) which provide a range of online facilitation tools such as brainstorming and categorization, a range of voting methods or structured discussions, typically with optional anonymity. Typically, EMS do not provide core web conferencing functionality such as screen sharing or voice conferencing though some EMS can control web conferencing sessions.
Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_conferencing
21 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques
by Matt McGee,
Businesses are growing more aware of the need to understand and implement at least the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). But if you read a variety of blogs and websites, you’ll quickly see that there’s a lot of uncertainty over what makes up “the basics.” Without access to high-level consulting and without a lot of experience knowing what SEO resources can be trusted, there’s also a lot of misinformation about SEO strategies and tactics.
1. Commit yourself to the process. SEO isn’t a one-time event. Search engine algorithms change regularly, so the tactics that worked last year may not work this year. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment.
2. Be patient. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.
3. Ask a lot of questions when hiring an SEO company. It’s your job to know what kind of tactics the company uses. Ask for specifics. Ask if there are any risks involved. Then get online yourself and do your own research—about the company, about the tactics they discussed, and so forth.
4. Become a student of SEO. If you’re taking the do-it-yourself route, you’ll have to become a student of SEO and learn as much as you can. Luckily for you, there are plenty of great web resources (like Search Engine Land) and several terrific books you can read. (Yes, actual printed books!) See our What Is SEO page for a variety of articles, books and resources.
5. Have web analytics in place at the start. You should have clearly defined goals for your SEO efforts, and you’ll need web analytics software in place so you can track what’s working and what’s not.
6. Build a great web site. I’m sure you want to show up on the first page of results. Ask yourself, “Is my site really one of the 10 best sites in the world on this topic?” Be honest. If it’s not, make it better.
7. Include a site map page. Spiders can’t index pages that can’t be crawled. A site map will help spiders find all the important pages on your site, and help the spider understand your site’s hierarchy. This is especially helpful if your site has a hard-to-crawl navigation menu. If your site is large, make several site map pages. Keep each one to less than 100 links. I tell clients 75 is the max to be safe.
8. Make SEO-friendly URLs. Use keywords in your URLs and file names, such as yourdomain.com/red-widgets.html. Don’t overdo it, though. A file with 3+ hyphens tends to look spammy and users may be hesitant to click on it. Related bonus tip: Use hyphens in URLs and file names, not underscores. Hyphens are treated as a “space,” while underscores are not.
9. Do keyword research at the start of the project. If you’re on a tight budget, use the free versions of Keyword Discovery or WordTracker, both of which also have more powerful paid versions. Ignore the numbers these tools show; what’s important is the relative volume of one keyword to another. Another good free tool is Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool, which doesn’t show exact numbers.
10. Open up a PPC account. Whether it’s Google’s AdWords, Microsoft adCenter or something else, this is a great way to get actual search volume for your keywords. Yes, it costs money, but if you have the budget it’s worth the investment. It’s also the solution if you didn’t like the “Be patient” suggestion above and are looking for instant visibility.
11. Use a unique and relevant title and meta description on every page. The page title is the single most important on-page SEO factor. It’s rare to rank highly for a primary term (2-3 words) without that term being part of the page title. The meta description tag won’t help you rank, but it will often appear as the text snippet below your listing, so it should include the relevant keyword(s) and be written so as to encourage searchers to click on your listing. Related bonus tip: You can ignore the Keywords meta tag, as no major search engine today supports it.
12. Write for users first. Google, Yahoo, etc., have pretty powerful bots crawling the web, but to my knowledge these bots have never bought anything online, signed up for a newsletter, or picked up the phone to call about your services. Humans do those things, so write your page copy with humans in mind. Yes, you need keywords in the text, but don’t stuff each page like a Thanksgiving turkey. Keep it readable.
13. Create great, unique content. This is important for everyone, but it’s a particular challenge for online retailers. If you’re selling the same widget that 50 other retailers are selling, and everyone is using the boilerplate descriptions from the manufacturer, this is a great opportunity. Write your own product descriptions, using the keyword research you did earlier (see #9 above) to target actual words searchers use, and make product pages that blow the competition away. Plus, retailer or not, great content is a great way to get inbound links.
14. Use your keywords as anchor text when linking internally. Anchor text helps tells spiders what the linked-to page is about. Links that say “click here” do nothing for your search engine visibility.
15. Build links intelligently. Begin with foundational links like trusted directories. (Yahoo and DMOZ are often cited as examples, but don’t waste time worrying about DMOZ submission. Submit it and forget it.) Seek links from authority sites in your industry. If local search matters to you (more on that coming up), seek links from trusted sites in your geographic area — the Chamber of Commerce, local business directories, etc. Analyze the inbound links to your competitors to find links you can acquire, too. Create great content on a consistent basis and use social media to build awareness and links. (A blog is great for this; see below.)
16. Use press releases wisely. Developing a relationship with media covering your industry or your local region can be a great source of exposure, including getting links from trusted media web sites. Distributing releases online can be an effective link building tactic, and opens the door for exposure in news search sites. Related bonus tip: Only issue a release when you have something newsworthy to report. Don’t waste journalists’ time.
17. Start a blog and participate with other related blogs. Search engines, Google especially, love blogs for the fresh content and highly-structured data. Beyond that, there’s no better way to join the conversations that are already taking place about your industry and/or company. Reading and commenting on other blogs can also increase your exposure and help you acquire new links. Related bonus tip: Put your blog at yourdomain.com/blog so your main domain gets the benefit of any links to your blog posts. If that’s not possible, use blog.yourdomain.com.
18. Use social media marketing wisely. If your business has a visual element, join the appropriate communities on Flickr and post high-quality photos there. If you’re a service-oriented business, use Quora and/or Yahoo Answers to position yourself as an expert in your industry. Any business should also be looking to make use of Twitter and Facebook, as social information and signals from these are being used as part of search engine rankings for Google and Bing. With any social media site you use, the first rule is don’t spam! Be an active, contributing member of the site. The idea is to interact with potential customers, not annoy them.
19. Take advantage of local search opportunities. Online research for offline buying is a growing trend. Optimize your site to catch local traffic by showing your address and local phone number prominently. Write a detailed Directions/Location page using neighborhoods and landmarks in the page text. Submit your site to the free local listings services that the major search engines offer. Make sure your site is listed in local/social directories such as CitySearch, Yelp, Local.com, etc., and encourage customers to leave reviews of your business on these sites, too.
20. Take advantage of the tools the search engines give you. Sign up for Google Webmaster Central, Bing Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer to learn more about how the search engines see your site, including how many inbound links they’re aware of.
21. Diversify your traffic sources. Google may bring you 70% of your traffic today, but what if the next big algorithm update hits you hard? What if your Google visibility goes away tomorrow? Newsletters and other subscriber-based content can help you hold on to traffic/customers no matter what the search engines do. In fact, many of the DOs on this list—creating great content, starting a blog, using social media and local search, etc.—will help you grow an audience of loyal prospects and customers that may help you survive the whims of search engines.
Read more here: http://searchengineland.com/21-essential-seo-tips-techniques-11580
Businesses are growing more aware of the need to understand and implement at least the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). But if you read a variety of blogs and websites, you’ll quickly see that there’s a lot of uncertainty over what makes up “the basics.” Without access to high-level consulting and without a lot of experience knowing what SEO resources can be trusted, there’s also a lot of misinformation about SEO strategies and tactics.
1. Commit yourself to the process. SEO isn’t a one-time event. Search engine algorithms change regularly, so the tactics that worked last year may not work this year. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment.
2. Be patient. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.
3. Ask a lot of questions when hiring an SEO company. It’s your job to know what kind of tactics the company uses. Ask for specifics. Ask if there are any risks involved. Then get online yourself and do your own research—about the company, about the tactics they discussed, and so forth.
4. Become a student of SEO. If you’re taking the do-it-yourself route, you’ll have to become a student of SEO and learn as much as you can. Luckily for you, there are plenty of great web resources (like Search Engine Land) and several terrific books you can read. (Yes, actual printed books!) See our What Is SEO page for a variety of articles, books and resources.
5. Have web analytics in place at the start. You should have clearly defined goals for your SEO efforts, and you’ll need web analytics software in place so you can track what’s working and what’s not.
6. Build a great web site. I’m sure you want to show up on the first page of results. Ask yourself, “Is my site really one of the 10 best sites in the world on this topic?” Be honest. If it’s not, make it better.
7. Include a site map page. Spiders can’t index pages that can’t be crawled. A site map will help spiders find all the important pages on your site, and help the spider understand your site’s hierarchy. This is especially helpful if your site has a hard-to-crawl navigation menu. If your site is large, make several site map pages. Keep each one to less than 100 links. I tell clients 75 is the max to be safe.
8. Make SEO-friendly URLs. Use keywords in your URLs and file names, such as yourdomain.com/red-widgets.html. Don’t overdo it, though. A file with 3+ hyphens tends to look spammy and users may be hesitant to click on it. Related bonus tip: Use hyphens in URLs and file names, not underscores. Hyphens are treated as a “space,” while underscores are not.
9. Do keyword research at the start of the project. If you’re on a tight budget, use the free versions of Keyword Discovery or WordTracker, both of which also have more powerful paid versions. Ignore the numbers these tools show; what’s important is the relative volume of one keyword to another. Another good free tool is Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool, which doesn’t show exact numbers.
10. Open up a PPC account. Whether it’s Google’s AdWords, Microsoft adCenter or something else, this is a great way to get actual search volume for your keywords. Yes, it costs money, but if you have the budget it’s worth the investment. It’s also the solution if you didn’t like the “Be patient” suggestion above and are looking for instant visibility.
11. Use a unique and relevant title and meta description on every page. The page title is the single most important on-page SEO factor. It’s rare to rank highly for a primary term (2-3 words) without that term being part of the page title. The meta description tag won’t help you rank, but it will often appear as the text snippet below your listing, so it should include the relevant keyword(s) and be written so as to encourage searchers to click on your listing. Related bonus tip: You can ignore the Keywords meta tag, as no major search engine today supports it.
12. Write for users first. Google, Yahoo, etc., have pretty powerful bots crawling the web, but to my knowledge these bots have never bought anything online, signed up for a newsletter, or picked up the phone to call about your services. Humans do those things, so write your page copy with humans in mind. Yes, you need keywords in the text, but don’t stuff each page like a Thanksgiving turkey. Keep it readable.
13. Create great, unique content. This is important for everyone, but it’s a particular challenge for online retailers. If you’re selling the same widget that 50 other retailers are selling, and everyone is using the boilerplate descriptions from the manufacturer, this is a great opportunity. Write your own product descriptions, using the keyword research you did earlier (see #9 above) to target actual words searchers use, and make product pages that blow the competition away. Plus, retailer or not, great content is a great way to get inbound links.
14. Use your keywords as anchor text when linking internally. Anchor text helps tells spiders what the linked-to page is about. Links that say “click here” do nothing for your search engine visibility.
15. Build links intelligently. Begin with foundational links like trusted directories. (Yahoo and DMOZ are often cited as examples, but don’t waste time worrying about DMOZ submission. Submit it and forget it.) Seek links from authority sites in your industry. If local search matters to you (more on that coming up), seek links from trusted sites in your geographic area — the Chamber of Commerce, local business directories, etc. Analyze the inbound links to your competitors to find links you can acquire, too. Create great content on a consistent basis and use social media to build awareness and links. (A blog is great for this; see below.)
16. Use press releases wisely. Developing a relationship with media covering your industry or your local region can be a great source of exposure, including getting links from trusted media web sites. Distributing releases online can be an effective link building tactic, and opens the door for exposure in news search sites. Related bonus tip: Only issue a release when you have something newsworthy to report. Don’t waste journalists’ time.
17. Start a blog and participate with other related blogs. Search engines, Google especially, love blogs for the fresh content and highly-structured data. Beyond that, there’s no better way to join the conversations that are already taking place about your industry and/or company. Reading and commenting on other blogs can also increase your exposure and help you acquire new links. Related bonus tip: Put your blog at yourdomain.com/blog so your main domain gets the benefit of any links to your blog posts. If that’s not possible, use blog.yourdomain.com.
18. Use social media marketing wisely. If your business has a visual element, join the appropriate communities on Flickr and post high-quality photos there. If you’re a service-oriented business, use Quora and/or Yahoo Answers to position yourself as an expert in your industry. Any business should also be looking to make use of Twitter and Facebook, as social information and signals from these are being used as part of search engine rankings for Google and Bing. With any social media site you use, the first rule is don’t spam! Be an active, contributing member of the site. The idea is to interact with potential customers, not annoy them.
19. Take advantage of local search opportunities. Online research for offline buying is a growing trend. Optimize your site to catch local traffic by showing your address and local phone number prominently. Write a detailed Directions/Location page using neighborhoods and landmarks in the page text. Submit your site to the free local listings services that the major search engines offer. Make sure your site is listed in local/social directories such as CitySearch, Yelp, Local.com, etc., and encourage customers to leave reviews of your business on these sites, too.
20. Take advantage of the tools the search engines give you. Sign up for Google Webmaster Central, Bing Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer to learn more about how the search engines see your site, including how many inbound links they’re aware of.
21. Diversify your traffic sources. Google may bring you 70% of your traffic today, but what if the next big algorithm update hits you hard? What if your Google visibility goes away tomorrow? Newsletters and other subscriber-based content can help you hold on to traffic/customers no matter what the search engines do. In fact, many of the DOs on this list—creating great content, starting a blog, using social media and local search, etc.—will help you grow an audience of loyal prospects and customers that may help you survive the whims of search engines.
Read more here: http://searchengineland.com/21-essential-seo-tips-techniques-11580
4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic
by Daniel Scocco
First Step: Killer Articles (1 hour per day)
Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on).
Notice that your goal is to release one killer article every week. If that is not possible aim for one every 15 days. So the one hour that you will spend every day will be dedicated to the same piece. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work.
If you are not familiar with the term, a killer article is nothing more than a long and structured article that has the goal of delivering a huge amount of value to potential visitors. If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”. Here are some ideas for killer articles:
create a giant list of resources,
write a detailed tutorial teaching people how to do something,
find a solution for a common problem in your niche and write about it, or
write a deep analysis on a topic where people have only talked superficially
When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my Twitter account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”
Second Step: Networking (30 minutes per day)
Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:
commenting on other blogs in your niche,
linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.
Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together.
Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day)
The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:
letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.
If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.
Fourth Step: Normal Posts (30 minutes per day)
Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles. For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:
a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers
First Step: Killer Articles (1 hour per day)
Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on).
Notice that your goal is to release one killer article every week. If that is not possible aim for one every 15 days. So the one hour that you will spend every day will be dedicated to the same piece. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work.
If you are not familiar with the term, a killer article is nothing more than a long and structured article that has the goal of delivering a huge amount of value to potential visitors. If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”. Here are some ideas for killer articles:
create a giant list of resources,
write a detailed tutorial teaching people how to do something,
find a solution for a common problem in your niche and write about it, or
write a deep analysis on a topic where people have only talked superficially
When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my Twitter account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”
Second Step: Networking (30 minutes per day)
Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:
commenting on other blogs in your niche,
linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.
Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together.
Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day)
The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:
letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.
If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.
Fourth Step: Normal Posts (30 minutes per day)
Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles. For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:
a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers
28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website
by Daniel Scocco
There are several lists with “ways to make money with a website” on the Internet, but none of them seem to be complete. That is why I decided to create this one. If you know a method that is not listed below, just let us know and we’ll update it.
Notice that ways to make money with a website are different from ways to make more money from it. Methods to increase your traffic or click-through rate will help you make more money, but they do not represent a method of making money per se.
For example, one could suggest that blending AdSense ads with the content is a way to make money from a website. In reality it’s not; it’s just a way to make more money by improving your ad click-through rate. The real monetization method behind it is a PPC ad network.
The list is divided into direct and indirect methods, and examples and links are provided for each point. Enjoy!
Direct Methods
1. PPC Advertising Networks
Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.
The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).
The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.
List of popular CPC advertising networks:
Google Adsense
Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN)
BidVertiser
Chitika
Clicksor
2. CPM Advertising Networks
CPM advertising networks behave pretty much as PPC networks, except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions.
A blog that generates 100,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $1 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.
CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format. The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers). The closer you put the ad to the top of the page, the higher the CPM. The bigger the format (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.
You can get as low as $0,10 and as high as $10 per 1,000 impressions (more in some special cases). CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).
List of popular CPM advertising networks:
Casale Media
Burst Media
Value Click
Advertising.com
Tribal Fusion
Right Media
3. Direct Banner Advertising
Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremost because it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 728×90 leaderboard, the 120×600 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle and the 125×125 button.
The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.
Related links:
How to Find Advertisers for Your Website
Finding Advertisers for Your Blog
Direct Advertising Sales for Beginners
Openads Ad Server
OIO Publisher Ad Platform
4. Text Link Ads
After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular.
Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not.
The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process.
Text link marketplaces and networks:
DigitalPoint Link Sales Forum
Text-Link-Ads
Text-Link-Brokers
TNX
LinkWorth
5. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based.
Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews.
In order to find suitable affiliate programs you can turn to individual companies and publishers like Dreamhost and SEOBook, or join affiliate marketplaces and networks.
List of popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:
Commission Junction
ClickBank
Azoogle Ads
Link Share
6. Monetization Widgets
The latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website. Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links.
Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.
List of companies that provide monetization widgets:
WidgetBucks
ScratchBack
SmartLinks
7. Sponsored Reviews
PayPerPost pioneered this model, with much controversy on the beginning (related to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model.
Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics. Not all bloggers are willing to get paid to write about a specific product or website (because it might compromise the editorial credibility), but the ones who do are making good money out of it.
If your blog has a big audience you could also offer sponsored reviews directly, cutting off the commissions of the middleman.
List of sponsored reviews and paid blogging networks:
PayPerPost
Sponsored Reviews
ReviewMe
BlogVertise
Smorty
8. RSS Feed Ads
With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.
Feedburber already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.
Finally, some blogs are also opting to sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. John Chow and Marketing Pilgrim are two examples.
Related links:
Feedburner
BidVertiser
Pheedo
9. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events
If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually.
This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.
Mashable illustrates the case well. They have several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles, including the “Daily Poll” and the “Web 2.0 Invites.”
Problogger also runs group writing projects occasionally, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.
10.Premium Content
Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools.
SEOMoz is a good example. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members. It costs $48 monthly and it grants them access to guides, tools and other exclusive material.
11. Private Forums
While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join.
SEO Blackhat charges $100 monthly from its members, and they have thousands of them. Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership you need to provide real value for the members (e.g., secret techniques, tools, and so on).
Performancing also launched a private forum recently, focused on the networking aspect. It is called The Hive, and the monthly cost is $10.
These are just two examples. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.
List of popular forum software:
vBulletin
Simple Machines Forum
phpBB
Vanilla
12. Job Boards
All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger… you name it.
Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic.
The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.
List of popular job board software:
JobThread
Web Scribe Job Board
SimplyHired Job-o-matic
Jobbex
13. Marketplaces
Sitepoint is the online marketplace by excellence. Some websites and blogs, however, are trying to replicate that model on a smaller scale.
Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings.
The problem with this method is that there are no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.
You can see an example of a marketplaces being used on EasyWordpress and on Mashable.
14. Paid Surveys and Polls
There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. The most popular one is called Vizu Answers.
Basically you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.
15. Selling or Renting Internal Pages
Million Dollar Wiki made this concept popular, but it was being used on the web for a long time around (check Pagerank10.co.uk for instance).
These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way.
Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.
16. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors
Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled “Techmeme Sponsor Posts.”
On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. Considering that the monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time, it must be working well.
17. Donations
Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content.
Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems (one good example being Steve Pavlina).
A small variation of this method appeared sometime ago with the Buy Me a Beer plugin. This WordPress plugin enables you to insert a customized message at the bottom of each article, asking the readers to chip in for a beer or coffee.
18. In-text Adverting
In-text adverting networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money.
Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.
19. Pop-ups and Pop-unders
Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make a much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them.
If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.
Ad networks that use pop-ups:
Tribal Fusion
PayPopup
PopupAd
Adversal
20. Audio Ads
Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small audio advertising (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.
The company is still rolling tests, but some users are reporting to get from a $4 to a $6 CPM. Regardless of the pay rate, though, this is a very intrusive form of advertising, so think twice before using it.
21. Selling the Website
Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time.
Market places on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they most used parameter to determine the value of a website is the monthly revenue that it generates, multiplied by a certain number (the multiplier can be anything from 5 to 30, depending on the expectations of the seller, on the quality of the site, on the niche and other factors).
Some people also make money trading and flipping websites. They either create them from scratch or buy existing ones, and after some revamping they sell them for a profit.
Related links:
How To Buy A Website And Flip It For Profit
How To Sell A Website – How Much Is Your Website Worth?
Where to sell a website? How to go about selling it?
Indirect Methods
22. Selling an Ebook
Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.
You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.
Related links:
Writing an ebook for your blog
How to sell ebooks
Processing payments for your ebook
How to sell digital products online
List of ebook selling software
23. Selling a Hardcover Book
Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.
While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book. First she built her authority on the subject via her blog, and afterwards she published the book.
List of self publishing and publishing services:
Lulu
Self Publishing
iUniverse
WordClay
24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes
As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter.
On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.
Brian Gardner and Unique Blog Designs are two examples of websites that make money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.
25. Offering Consulting and Related Services
Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.
Chris Garrett used a similar strategy. First he created a highly influential blog on the blogging and new media niche, and afterwards he started offering consulting services to clients with related problems and needs.
26. Creating an Email List or Newsletter
Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.
Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.
Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters, proving that this method works.
List of software to manage email newsletters:
AWeber
SendStudio NX
PHP Autoresponder
Constant Contact
27. Mentoring programs
People are willing to pay for someone or something that will teach them and give them knowledge (as opposed to mere information). Education is one of the biggest industries in the world, and the online landscape behaves in a similar way.
Creating a mentoring program related to the niche of your website could be very profitable if you manage to structure and promote it adequately. There is a wide range of media and tools that you can use to deliver the information, from text articles to audio and video lessons.
Brian Clark leveraged the success of Copyblogger to launch a mentoring program teaching people how to build membership and how to sell content online. The program is titled Teaching Sells, and it costs $97 monthly. Sounds expensive, but they have over 1,000 members.
28. Creating a conference around the website
If your website takes off and becomes an authority on its niche, you could create a conference around it. Depending on the size of your audience, the event could attract thousands of people, and you could make money directly from conference passes and sponsors.
Search Engine Land, for instance, created a series of conferences that visit several cities on the United States and on other countries as well. The conferences are called Search Marketing Expo, and the tickets and passes cost thousands of dollars.
Read original post here: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/ways-to-make-money-online-with-website/
There are several lists with “ways to make money with a website” on the Internet, but none of them seem to be complete. That is why I decided to create this one. If you know a method that is not listed below, just let us know and we’ll update it.
Notice that ways to make money with a website are different from ways to make more money from it. Methods to increase your traffic or click-through rate will help you make more money, but they do not represent a method of making money per se.
For example, one could suggest that blending AdSense ads with the content is a way to make money from a website. In reality it’s not; it’s just a way to make more money by improving your ad click-through rate. The real monetization method behind it is a PPC ad network.
The list is divided into direct and indirect methods, and examples and links are provided for each point. Enjoy!
Direct Methods
1. PPC Advertising Networks
Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.
The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).
The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.
List of popular CPC advertising networks:
Google Adsense
Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN)
BidVertiser
Chitika
Clicksor
2. CPM Advertising Networks
CPM advertising networks behave pretty much as PPC networks, except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions.
A blog that generates 100,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $1 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.
CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format. The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers). The closer you put the ad to the top of the page, the higher the CPM. The bigger the format (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.
You can get as low as $0,10 and as high as $10 per 1,000 impressions (more in some special cases). CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).
List of popular CPM advertising networks:
Casale Media
Burst Media
Value Click
Advertising.com
Tribal Fusion
Right Media
3. Direct Banner Advertising
Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremost because it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 728×90 leaderboard, the 120×600 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle and the 125×125 button.
The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.
Related links:
How to Find Advertisers for Your Website
Finding Advertisers for Your Blog
Direct Advertising Sales for Beginners
Openads Ad Server
OIO Publisher Ad Platform
4. Text Link Ads
After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular.
Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not.
The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process.
Text link marketplaces and networks:
DigitalPoint Link Sales Forum
Text-Link-Ads
Text-Link-Brokers
TNX
LinkWorth
5. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based.
Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews.
In order to find suitable affiliate programs you can turn to individual companies and publishers like Dreamhost and SEOBook, or join affiliate marketplaces and networks.
List of popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:
Commission Junction
ClickBank
Azoogle Ads
Link Share
6. Monetization Widgets
The latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website. Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links.
Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.
List of companies that provide monetization widgets:
WidgetBucks
ScratchBack
SmartLinks
7. Sponsored Reviews
PayPerPost pioneered this model, with much controversy on the beginning (related to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model.
Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics. Not all bloggers are willing to get paid to write about a specific product or website (because it might compromise the editorial credibility), but the ones who do are making good money out of it.
If your blog has a big audience you could also offer sponsored reviews directly, cutting off the commissions of the middleman.
List of sponsored reviews and paid blogging networks:
PayPerPost
Sponsored Reviews
ReviewMe
BlogVertise
Smorty
8. RSS Feed Ads
With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.
Feedburber already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.
Finally, some blogs are also opting to sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. John Chow and Marketing Pilgrim are two examples.
Related links:
Feedburner
BidVertiser
Pheedo
9. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events
If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually.
This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.
Mashable illustrates the case well. They have several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles, including the “Daily Poll” and the “Web 2.0 Invites.”
Problogger also runs group writing projects occasionally, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.
10.Premium Content
Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools.
SEOMoz is a good example. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members. It costs $48 monthly and it grants them access to guides, tools and other exclusive material.
11. Private Forums
While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join.
SEO Blackhat charges $100 monthly from its members, and they have thousands of them. Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership you need to provide real value for the members (e.g., secret techniques, tools, and so on).
Performancing also launched a private forum recently, focused on the networking aspect. It is called The Hive, and the monthly cost is $10.
These are just two examples. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.
List of popular forum software:
vBulletin
Simple Machines Forum
phpBB
Vanilla
12. Job Boards
All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger… you name it.
Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic.
The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.
List of popular job board software:
JobThread
Web Scribe Job Board
SimplyHired Job-o-matic
Jobbex
13. Marketplaces
Sitepoint is the online marketplace by excellence. Some websites and blogs, however, are trying to replicate that model on a smaller scale.
Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings.
The problem with this method is that there are no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.
You can see an example of a marketplaces being used on EasyWordpress and on Mashable.
14. Paid Surveys and Polls
There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. The most popular one is called Vizu Answers.
Basically you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.
15. Selling or Renting Internal Pages
Million Dollar Wiki made this concept popular, but it was being used on the web for a long time around (check Pagerank10.co.uk for instance).
These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way.
Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.
16. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors
Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled “Techmeme Sponsor Posts.”
On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. Considering that the monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time, it must be working well.
17. Donations
Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content.
Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems (one good example being Steve Pavlina).
A small variation of this method appeared sometime ago with the Buy Me a Beer plugin. This WordPress plugin enables you to insert a customized message at the bottom of each article, asking the readers to chip in for a beer or coffee.
18. In-text Adverting
In-text adverting networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money.
Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.
19. Pop-ups and Pop-unders
Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make a much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them.
If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.
Ad networks that use pop-ups:
Tribal Fusion
PayPopup
PopupAd
Adversal
20. Audio Ads
Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small audio advertising (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.
The company is still rolling tests, but some users are reporting to get from a $4 to a $6 CPM. Regardless of the pay rate, though, this is a very intrusive form of advertising, so think twice before using it.
21. Selling the Website
Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time.
Market places on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they most used parameter to determine the value of a website is the monthly revenue that it generates, multiplied by a certain number (the multiplier can be anything from 5 to 30, depending on the expectations of the seller, on the quality of the site, on the niche and other factors).
Some people also make money trading and flipping websites. They either create them from scratch or buy existing ones, and after some revamping they sell them for a profit.
Related links:
How To Buy A Website And Flip It For Profit
How To Sell A Website – How Much Is Your Website Worth?
Where to sell a website? How to go about selling it?
Indirect Methods
22. Selling an Ebook
Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.
You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.
Related links:
Writing an ebook for your blog
How to sell ebooks
Processing payments for your ebook
How to sell digital products online
List of ebook selling software
23. Selling a Hardcover Book
Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.
While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book. First she built her authority on the subject via her blog, and afterwards she published the book.
List of self publishing and publishing services:
Lulu
Self Publishing
iUniverse
WordClay
24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes
As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter.
On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.
Brian Gardner and Unique Blog Designs are two examples of websites that make money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.
25. Offering Consulting and Related Services
Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.
Chris Garrett used a similar strategy. First he created a highly influential blog on the blogging and new media niche, and afterwards he started offering consulting services to clients with related problems and needs.
26. Creating an Email List or Newsletter
Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.
Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.
Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters, proving that this method works.
List of software to manage email newsletters:
AWeber
SendStudio NX
PHP Autoresponder
Constant Contact
27. Mentoring programs
People are willing to pay for someone or something that will teach them and give them knowledge (as opposed to mere information). Education is one of the biggest industries in the world, and the online landscape behaves in a similar way.
Creating a mentoring program related to the niche of your website could be very profitable if you manage to structure and promote it adequately. There is a wide range of media and tools that you can use to deliver the information, from text articles to audio and video lessons.
Brian Clark leveraged the success of Copyblogger to launch a mentoring program teaching people how to build membership and how to sell content online. The program is titled Teaching Sells, and it costs $97 monthly. Sounds expensive, but they have over 1,000 members.
28. Creating a conference around the website
If your website takes off and becomes an authority on its niche, you could create a conference around it. Depending on the size of your audience, the event could attract thousands of people, and you could make money directly from conference passes and sponsors.
Search Engine Land, for instance, created a series of conferences that visit several cities on the United States and on other countries as well. The conferences are called Search Marketing Expo, and the tickets and passes cost thousands of dollars.
Read original post here: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/ways-to-make-money-online-with-website/
Blogging for Money - Step by Step Guide for beginners
This is a step by step guide for those who want to make money online from blogging.
Step 1: Choose a Blog Topic - This is one of the most crucial decisions a blogger has to make. I will only say the following two things:
Choose a blog topic about which you have above average knowledge, or at the very least, above average interest.
Choose a blog topic withing your interest area which is as general as possible. For example: instead of starting a blog about weight loss ideas, it would be much better to start a blog on a much more general topic : Health and Fitness. Get the idea? Believe me, this is very important. The reason for choosing a general blog topic is simple - you have a larger audience to target and this increases your chances. To give my own example, Investo Blog was first started as a blog for trading nifty futures (hence the url niftyprediction.blogspot.com). However later on i realized that by generalizing the blog topic to include everything related to money I would be able to get a lot more blog traffic.
Step 2: You have to develop a weekly routine. Decide how much time you can spend every week for blogging and related online activities. Since most of us have full time jobs, it may not be possible to blog everyday. For those of you who are serious about making money I recommend writing at least 3 to 5 blog posts per week, (daily one blog post or more would be awesome!). At least one of the blog post you write every week must be high quality. By high quality i mean one which has lot of content (say at least 1000 words or so) and which is on a topic which people search a lot. Include relevant images and videos in your quality blog posts.
Step 3: Submit your quality blog posts to Blog Carnivals. Submitting blog posts to carnivals is extremely easy and it can bring valuable blog traffic and help improve your page rank. Following these small tiny steps will have a tremendous positive impact on the amount of money you will make online from blogging.
Step 4: After you have about 20-25 articles in your blog, I recommend that you apply and open the following accounts:
Paypal Account - This is what you will need for receiving money from paid blogging networks or various other online sources. If you have regular visitors who admire your blog, you can also add a "Make a Donation" button on your blog using Paypal. I myself however, have never managed to make money online by donations to my blog.
Google Adsense Account: This will be your first sources of online blogging income. Apply for an adsense account and then come back to the section of Adsense Optimization of this page and learn some tips to maximize your income from Google Ads. In some cases your adsense application may be rejected because your site is not 6 months old or some other criterion. Relax ! dont worry. My adsense application was rejected 5 times. It turned out i was using the wrong email address to apply. In any case if your adsense application is rejected, take the reasons seriously and then reapply at a suitable time.
Pay Per Post: This will be your second important source of online blogging income. Initially you may get only a dollar or two for each paid review. But later on as your page rank increases you will earn more and more. You may also apply for other paid blogging networks listed below. Read the section Get Paid to Blog to learn how to make money online from Pay per post and other paid blogging networks.
Hubpages: You can consider this optional, but it is useful for SEO and traffic reasons. Writing a one or two articles per week on hubpages and putting one link to your blog in each post. Remember as your page rank increases, so will your income from pay per post. Read more about how to make money online from Hubpages below.
SiteMeter or StatCounter: This or any other equivalent web counter is good enough. This will be important to study your blog traffic as discussed in the next step. As I have mentioned earlier, the amount of money you make blogging is directly proportional to your blog traffic. So putting a good hit counter can help you take your traffic seriously.
No more steps. After you complete the above steps, some real online action begins. By now, you must have at least 5 to 10 google visitors per day and maybe some more visitors from other sources. Install a decent web counter (one of the above two is my own preference) and start monitoring your traffic. Spend a couple of minutes every day studying your traffic. What keywords do people use to arrive at your blog, etc. You will know which blog posts attract traffic and which blog posts do not. Get ideas from this and continue with your weekly routine.
Step 5: After you finish about 100 blog posts and start getting about 50 to 100 blog visitors every day you may join some affiliate marketing networks and apply for Affiliate programs. It may be a bit too early for you to start making money from referral or affiliate ads, but you can try.
After this you are on your own and your can read different ways to monetize your blog mentioned below. I have found that it is good to set yourself targets - for example : write at least 10 blog posts in the coming two weeks, or develop at least two links per week using Hubpages or try hard to take blog traffic to so and so level by end of next month etc. Setting targets provides good motivation.
Read more here: http://niftyprediction.blogspot.com/2009/04/make-money-online-from-blog-step-by.html
Step 1: Choose a Blog Topic - This is one of the most crucial decisions a blogger has to make. I will only say the following two things:
Choose a blog topic about which you have above average knowledge, or at the very least, above average interest.
Choose a blog topic withing your interest area which is as general as possible. For example: instead of starting a blog about weight loss ideas, it would be much better to start a blog on a much more general topic : Health and Fitness. Get the idea? Believe me, this is very important. The reason for choosing a general blog topic is simple - you have a larger audience to target and this increases your chances. To give my own example, Investo Blog was first started as a blog for trading nifty futures (hence the url niftyprediction.blogspot.com). However later on i realized that by generalizing the blog topic to include everything related to money I would be able to get a lot more blog traffic.
Step 2: You have to develop a weekly routine. Decide how much time you can spend every week for blogging and related online activities. Since most of us have full time jobs, it may not be possible to blog everyday. For those of you who are serious about making money I recommend writing at least 3 to 5 blog posts per week, (daily one blog post or more would be awesome!). At least one of the blog post you write every week must be high quality. By high quality i mean one which has lot of content (say at least 1000 words or so) and which is on a topic which people search a lot. Include relevant images and videos in your quality blog posts.
Step 3: Submit your quality blog posts to Blog Carnivals. Submitting blog posts to carnivals is extremely easy and it can bring valuable blog traffic and help improve your page rank. Following these small tiny steps will have a tremendous positive impact on the amount of money you will make online from blogging.
Step 4: After you have about 20-25 articles in your blog, I recommend that you apply and open the following accounts:
Paypal Account - This is what you will need for receiving money from paid blogging networks or various other online sources. If you have regular visitors who admire your blog, you can also add a "Make a Donation" button on your blog using Paypal. I myself however, have never managed to make money online by donations to my blog.
Google Adsense Account: This will be your first sources of online blogging income. Apply for an adsense account and then come back to the section of Adsense Optimization of this page and learn some tips to maximize your income from Google Ads. In some cases your adsense application may be rejected because your site is not 6 months old or some other criterion. Relax ! dont worry. My adsense application was rejected 5 times. It turned out i was using the wrong email address to apply. In any case if your adsense application is rejected, take the reasons seriously and then reapply at a suitable time.
Pay Per Post: This will be your second important source of online blogging income. Initially you may get only a dollar or two for each paid review. But later on as your page rank increases you will earn more and more. You may also apply for other paid blogging networks listed below. Read the section Get Paid to Blog to learn how to make money online from Pay per post and other paid blogging networks.
Hubpages: You can consider this optional, but it is useful for SEO and traffic reasons. Writing a one or two articles per week on hubpages and putting one link to your blog in each post. Remember as your page rank increases, so will your income from pay per post. Read more about how to make money online from Hubpages below.
SiteMeter or StatCounter: This or any other equivalent web counter is good enough. This will be important to study your blog traffic as discussed in the next step. As I have mentioned earlier, the amount of money you make blogging is directly proportional to your blog traffic. So putting a good hit counter can help you take your traffic seriously.
No more steps. After you complete the above steps, some real online action begins. By now, you must have at least 5 to 10 google visitors per day and maybe some more visitors from other sources. Install a decent web counter (one of the above two is my own preference) and start monitoring your traffic. Spend a couple of minutes every day studying your traffic. What keywords do people use to arrive at your blog, etc. You will know which blog posts attract traffic and which blog posts do not. Get ideas from this and continue with your weekly routine.
Step 5: After you finish about 100 blog posts and start getting about 50 to 100 blog visitors every day you may join some affiliate marketing networks and apply for Affiliate programs. It may be a bit too early for you to start making money from referral or affiliate ads, but you can try.
After this you are on your own and your can read different ways to monetize your blog mentioned below. I have found that it is good to set yourself targets - for example : write at least 10 blog posts in the coming two weeks, or develop at least two links per week using Hubpages or try hard to take blog traffic to so and so level by end of next month etc. Setting targets provides good motivation.
Read more here: http://niftyprediction.blogspot.com/2009/04/make-money-online-from-blog-step-by.html
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